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Get smart about
school testing
By:
Mr. Richard Innes
Comedian Steven Wright once said
that he got his driver’s-license photo taken out of focus on purpose. Now when
he gets pulled over, Wright said the cop squints at it, shakes his head and says
“Here, you can go.”
Looking at a fuzzy picture can be painful.
Kentucky’s education establishment continues to cause parents headaches by
offering a poorly focused view of the performance of our state’s public schools.
Despite mounting evidence about the unreliability of the Commonwealth
Accountability Testing System (CATS), the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE)
continues to praise the assessment as providing “a picture of a student’s level
of learning.”
This out-of-focus image offered by CATS has now become too painful for some
Kentucky school superintendents to accept.
Some administrators want to bring their school district’s academic performance
back into focus by participating in a pilot program that would require all
11th-graders to take the ACT test. The proposal offers more rapid and accurate
feedback about students’ accomplishments.
Critics whose main interest appears to be defending the status quo claim that
tests like the ACT are useful only in evaluating college-bound students.
However, skills measured by the ACT are now needed by students who may not be
destined for college but nevertheless want higher-paying technical jobs.
A recent ACT report indicates that these jobs now require math and science
skills similar to those expected of college freshmen. Even the automobile repair
and building construction fields, which once were fairly low-tech, now demand
greater technical aptitude.
Some states also are finding out that taking the ACT can benefit even the
weakest students.
Since Colorado started testing 100 percent of its high-school juniors in 2001,
scores for students with learning disabilities have risen significantly.
Contrary to widely accepted assumptions, these students not only were able to
take the test, but they increased their ACT Composite score by .7 point on the
test’s 36-point scale.
Since beginning the practice of requiring all 11th-graders to take the ACT,
Colorado has experienced both higher enrollment and lower remediation in its
colleges. Colorado’s entering freshmen are now far more ready to handle
college-level Algebra and English composition courses.
Education officials should support the request of Kentucky superintendents who
feel the urgency to find – and correct – problems before a student reaches
college. CATS simply does not offer enough useful information about the needs of
individual students. Increasing the weight of ACT scores would help ensure that
students have the skills to meet the demands of the 21st century.
It’s obvious that whatever CATS has been measuring, it’s not what is needed for
our students to succeed in college or compete for high-paying technical jobs.
The gap between the state’s ACT and CATS scores during the past five years
provides further support for the superintendents’ proposal. While CATS scores
have steadily risen, district-level ACT scores remain virtually unchanged and
remediation rates at our state’s colleges and universities are unacceptably
high.
Our state’s ACT scores also indicate that Kentucky’s high-school juniors lag
behind many students in other states. Sluggish overall ACT scores show little
progress since the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) was implemented in the
early 1990s.
Even worse, since students began taking the CATS test in 1999, the average ACT
scores in the state’s school districts have experienced a general decline. Local
districts actually scored lower on the ACT in 2004 than they did in 1998.
Meanwhile, neighboring states are making steady gains.
Illinois has increased its ACT Composite score even though it, like Colorado,
gives the test to all 11th-graders – even the academically weakest ones. In
Kentucky, the test is taken only by students seeking to gain admission into
college. Still, Kentucky’s 2004 ACT Composite score was no better than that of
either Colorado or Illinois.
The crisis in our state has become so obvious that Education Commissioner Gene
Wilhoit admitted at a recent meeting of the state’s board of education that
Kentucky’s high-school students have not made acceptable progress during the
last decade.
But talk is not enough. There must be action. Allowing these superintendents to
embark on a different testing policy would be a good place to begin.
Keeping Kentucky’s educational picture out of focus will bear much more serious
results than letting a speeder get away with a warning. Instead, too many of our
children will fail to get the education needed to thrive in this new century.
– Richard G. Innes is an education analyst for the
Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank.
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