“Assessments, such as NECAP, should not be used as a graduation requirement because such assessments have not been proven valid and reliable for high stakes purposes such as promotion and graduation decisions,” the Council said in a new report. “Research has also shown that these tests may narrow curriculum, and limit future educational opportunities, particularly for poor and minority students as well as English Language Learners and students with disabilities.”
The report says the NECAP test should not be used as a graduation requirement, and that its replacement – the PARCC – not be used either.
Standardized tests are designed to inform decision-making at the district level. For example, the NECAP scores from a fourth grade class in Pawtucket show that 80% of the students are either partially proficient or substantially below proficient in mathematics. The administration should be able to use the results as a “red flag” to show the need for a change in mathematic instruction for the next school year; i.e. an additional mathematics specialist/coach for the teaching team, smaller mathematic class sizes, longer mathematic classes, a change in curriculum or additional mathematic classes. When the needs are addressed at the district level our students will have access to the proper interventions leading to academic success later on.
The group was created by the legislature last year to improve communications between public school teachers and the state Board of Education.
The NECAPS and high stakes testing have been a scorching political hot potato in Rhode Island for more than a year. Teachers have long been opposed and last year Tom Sgouros wrote a blistering critique of the NECAP tests ability to measure individual performance. The Providence Student Union gave voice to student concerns and their Take the Test action showed a wide swath of politically-engaged adults how difficult the test can be. The legislature is considering weighing in on high stakes testing this session.
Through it all the Board of Education has declined to address the issue, even being chided by a judge for deliberating a request by the ACLU to discuss the matter in public.
The Board meets tonight and is not expected to have a formal debate on NECAPs in particular or high stakes tests in general.
]]>It said, in part:
…this General Assembly hereby urges the Board of Education to reconsider the current graduation requirements including the use of the state assessment and examine using a weighted compilation of the state assessment, coursework performance, and senior project or portfolio; and be it further
RESOLVED, That this General Assembly respectfully requests that the Board of Education delay the state assessment portion of the graduation requirement to allow for adequate time for students to be immersed in the common core curriculum;
Now the ball is in the Boards court. Newly constituted and charged with a broader set of responsibilities than either of it predecessor boards, how they react to this resolution will be an indicator of how seriously they take their responsibility to re-examine a policy not of their making. Will they, elect for a quick fix, or will they take the opportunity to consider what is best for meeting the needs of the Rhode Island public education system?
Anticipating this question, I wrote to a noted critic of standardized testing, Diane Ravitch. In my email, I said I was interested in measuring learning using instruments that look like the kinds of challenging performances schools and businesses require.
Ravitch replied:
The best example I know is the NY Performance Standards Consortium
20 years old
Great results
So I looked up the New York Performance Standards Consortium and was amazed by what I foundit was as if I had entered a different world from the one that is being put in place here. Before I describe that worldat least partiallylet me back up and review the reasons why finding an alternative world is so important, just sticking with issues related to testing students.
Many arguments have been advanced against using the NECAP as a graduation requirement. To my mind, the most significant are:
All three of these problems are relatedthe NECAP tends to create classroom environments that are narrowly focused and these are environments where students with less support fail.
The challenge then is to find an assessment system that keeps curriculum broad, pushes learning and teaching to be challenging and thoughtful, and supports weaker learners. The response to this challenge, as exemplified by the New York Performance Standards Consortium (NYPSC), is to develop tests that assess performance according to the New York standards. A performance assessment is distinguished from a standardized test by requiring a student to think about, and do something with, academic content beyond memorizing it.
As soon as you begin to test thinking, the idea of scoring a performance as right or wrong becomes nonsensical because thinking is seldom completely correct or completely wrong. Instead, the meaningful performance standards that can be applied to thinking include qualities such as completeness (did the student include the relevant facts, information, evidence, etc.), coherence (did the student assemble the evidence into an internally consistent argument), persuasiveness (did the student address other perspectives in this/her argument), and other similar criteria. As the consortium literature explains:
The tasks require students to demonstrate accomplishment in analytic thinking, reading comprehension, research writing skills, the application of mathematical computation and problem-solving skills, computer technology, the utilization of the scientific method in undertaking science research, appreciation of and performance skills in the arts, service learning and school to career skills.
If these are the criteria that students need to meet, then it is easy to see why performance assessments avoid the trap described in item 3 above, lowering the depth of instruction. By making explicit, and describing, the kinds of thinking students need to be able to do within content, these assessments serve as constant reminders of the appropriate depth at which learning and teaching should be conducted.
Because performance assessments are embedded in courses and do not test abstract reading and math, they do not tend to narrow the curriculum. Instead of eliminating courses because they do not teach math or reading, states, schools districts and schools can make decisions about what students need to know in order to graduate. They could, for example, decide that every student needs to demonstrate proficiency in a set of core courses, but then allow the student freedom to demonstrate proficiency in an elective area of interest. All of a sudden, the system becomes much less one size fits all. It does not take a lot of imagination to think up ways that graduation requirements based on performance can be elaborated in ways that intrigue, incent, and reward students in a wide variety of ways.
In order to be more concrete, lets take a look at what performance assessments in English/Language Arts and math look like in the NYPSC:
Literary Essays That Demonstrate Analytic Thinking:
Problem-Solving in Mathematics That Demonstrates High Level Conceptual Knowledge
As I look at this list, it becomes a lot harder to think of performance assessments as fluffthey are the real deal and a serious challenge to the NECAP. They have been in use for twenty years in the consortium (it was formed in 1997). In the consortium, school and district professional development is focused on promoting the ability of teachers to get students to think wellthat is, to pass the assessments. Somehow, I dont have a negative reaction to this version of teaching to the test.
The integrity of the assessments is maintained by an outside Performance Assessment Review Board, which does what most school districts do in the other English speaking countriesEngland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where the testing system is much closer to this form of performance assessments than it is to NECAP. Those countries, by the way, tend to perform better than we do on international measures of reading and math. You can argue why that is the case for any number of reasons, but its hard to argue their performance assessment system is holding them back.
But what about the first objection to the NECAP that I listedthat the NECAP, as a graduation requirement, has a negative impact on the most vulnerable students in the system?
Ive already argued that performance systems hold out the possibility of vitalizing teaching and learning for everyone, which would help these students. I also believe that assessing knowledge in context, not as isolated facts, is also a more natural way to think, so that would also help. But I see the issue of the 4,000 students who would loose their diplomas in the name of high standards as an issue of responsibility related to the use of the NECAP rather than an educational issue related to the nature of the NECAP.
It is very easy to use a testany testto draw an arbitrary line in the sand that separates one group of students from another. But who takes responsibility for the students on the wrong side of that line? Who changes the classrooms, develops the teachers, revises the curriculum, and puts in the support programs these students need to get over the line? And if the line consigns many more children to failure than we can get over the line, then it is irresponsibly destructive to draw the line.
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