Test Scores on Transcripts

Principals in my home district are lobbying the school board to adopt a new policy to place California Standardized Test Scores on students transcripts. The board discussed this last night. I was disappointed that they did not seem to find much wrong with the argument. I am opposed to placing scores on transcripts for many reasons, as a parent but more importantly as an educator and researcher of many years. Here are my main points:

1. Adding a penalty and reward to a test that was NOT graded changes the testing conditions. The purpose of standardized tests is to standardize testing conditions. This is changing the very reliability of the instrument. And the validity of the data. 

2. The strongest argument presented by staff so far is "Other districts are!"  I can just hear my mother in the back ground, "Just because other districts are using cheap gimmicks to raise scores (rather than improving teaching and learning) does not mean we should."  I know of schools where the principal purchased IPODs to raffle during test week (must be present to win). They saw a jump in test scores. Should we set aside funds for a bribe? 

3. There are many examples of raising test scores by focusing on curriculum and instruction that are more professional and in the better interest of students' long term academic success than this proposal.  If the goal is to improve curriculum and instruction, why are we not discussing that? 

4. This strategy engages the most proficient (i.e.: college bound) students only and may exacerbate the achievement gap-- a persistent problem. The fastest and best way to pull up scores in schools (statistically speaking) is to focus on the increasing the lowest scores. Small gains in far below and below basic scores can pull aggregate scores up disproportionately. Yet many of these students are so far behind in the competition for college that transcripts have little value to them. Pulling students in for counseling to set academic goals; immersing them in content area courses that support content area literacy (rather than pulling them out for RTI that causes them to fall behind in standards based course work); assigning faculty mentors who discuss progress in coursework and test scores during tutorial; notifying parents of test scores and offering supports for lower scoring students such as after school test prep courses; heightening community awareness of the importance of test scores for property values and funding; these are strategies that will do a great deal to engage students and families in support of this effort. Of course, this requires effort and thought, which is what the transcript strategy tries to avoid. Engaging students who are disaffected, disengaged and disenfranchised from the schooling process is hard work. It requires courage and educational leadership, qualities we should demand from principals. 

4. The CST produces little information of value about learning; it is a blunt instrument that gives better information about population trends than individual achievement. Or teaching. While we can get individual scores, we do not do item analysis. (see http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/css05rtq.asp for released test items). 

Item analysis is the only way to yield this kind of information:

90% of teacher A's students answered the item on meiosis correctly- teacher A must be teaching this well. Let's emulate that.

85% of teacher A's students missed all of the questions on Punnett Squares-- teacher A must not cover this. This is a heavily tested topic. Let's review how we teach this and design more effective instruction.

The best way for schools to determine how to improve their coverage in order to optimize test scores is to have department level meetings, with the support of the site educational leader, to review the testing blueprint (http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/blueprints.asp) compare it to what is being taught and develop rich, engaging units of study around heavily tested topics and themes. You do not need better test scores to do this. In fact, you don't need test scores at all. You just need professional learning communities and administrators who are not afraid to tell their staff that test scores in fact are related to teaching and learning and that teachers CAN raise scores. Back to educational leadership.

It comes down to curriculum and instruction. Candy might help. But I think learning is better for long term health. 

Taking the low road here would signal to me and to many people who are too smart to be fooled by this silly argument that our board does not have faith in our staff's ability to improve instruction and learning by focusing on instruction and learning. What I hear when I listen to these two principals is desperation. I hear an adult blaming students for their own failure to engage, inspire and teach. I feel embarrassed that our district would even consider sending this insulting message to students "Well, we've done OUR best with you, clearly your scores are low because you are not trying hard enough." It is time we all stood up and acted like adults who take responsibility for our work and our children.

Sometimes the right thing is not the easy thing. I think it is time for the board to send a message to staff that teaching and learning matter most. Focus on this, test scores will follow. Let students in on the secret-- under NCLB these scores matter for your school-- they will come through. Just like they do for other inter-school competitions in sports, music and robotics. Have faith in the teaching staff, and in students. Demand educational leadership from administrators.

Gina

No Child Left Behind might be left behind!

If you have not read Mark's blog today, you should!

Arne Duncan is talking about No Child Left Behind, and though he is not quite saying what I would want to hear (No Child Left Behind is a failed policy, an albatross around our necks, needs to be scrapped, etc.) he is saying that in a Washington savvy kind of way, perhaps. 

No Child Left Behind needs to be re-branded. Maybe even revised, rewritten. That sounds like new policy potentially. That would be good. Potentially. WE need to get involved. 

What role does the federal government play in education anyway? How does it impact state and local education agencies? Besides mandating education for all children, including children of color, Native American children, and children with disabilities, federal regulations define how money is spent in education. 

No Child Left Behind  also regulated curriculum through departments like Reading First, that controlled what curricula could be purchased and used in schools. Reading First has bordered on scandal, with accusations that officers took kickbacks and prevented fair competition among publishers. 

Reading First is an illustration of what is wrong with No Child Left Behind and educational policy in our current era. It is publisher focused, that is,  a business enterprise, driven by business people who see the world as a market place in which problems are solved by buying and selling things. Not that there is anything wrong with that. 

But it just may raise the wrong set of questions. 

Maybe it is time to stop talking about NCLB altogether and decide what conversation we want to have going forward. Let's talk about a new vision for education, and leave the old brand behind completely. We don't need a new brand for an old corporation, we need a whole new model of business, I mean, school. 

Apprenticeships, not electives

Recently posted on the blog operated by members of my local board of education was a comment about electives. Why Home Ec? It was a reasonable question and if we really took it up, we could have a positive impact on regular education, special education and the community.

An example of an elective that makes sense could be designed after a new program discussed in Solar Today: Training the green collar workforce. This program is being replicated in a few places around the country, included west Contra Costa County. We should jump on this wave now and paddle hard, or we will miss it.

Electives-- introductory courses that offer breadth and opportunities to explore a new field or discipline-- should be offered early in elementary and middle school. They should include REAL things like courses in electricity, plumbing, carpentry, child development, public health, water treatment and other non-traditional but essential topics that can lead to meaningful work with living wages.

By high school, "electives" should be phased out and replaced with courses of study. A student completing a course of study in electrical studies, for example, would have work experience and be ready to enter any number of union apprenticeships, which require passing grades in algebra and understanding of physics. A student completing a course of study in science would graduate with the experience and prerequisites needed to enter majors in pre-med or pre-engineering. Either way, students would have a solid foundation that prepared them both for meaningful work and a changing workforce.

We should have the courage to reinvent the remedial "work" mandated under the guise of NCLB-- math work that is in complete contradiction to every finding in the TIMMS study and reading work that contradicts research about adolescent literacy. Instead, math course work should be strongly linked to the science curriculum and math studied for what it is, a language that describes real world phenomenon. Reading should expand what readers know and want to learn about relevant and engaging topics.

This quality of education is currently denied to students who score in the "lower" half of the tested students. These students reasonably may decide they have better things to do than pretend to learn from this below basic education. Why would any student continue to manipulate numbers on a worksheet in order to prove their worth to a system that has written them off as "low performing"? Why do we pretend that they have to read things like "Doggie and Hoggie like Froggie" before they can move onto more complex things (like IPOD directions). Given the opportunity to see concepts brought to life while doing complex things like wiring solar systems on existing roofs can catapult these "slower" kids into income brackets that their teachers will envy and position them to do work they are worthy of.

It is time we cast off the classist and classical education of the 19th and 20th centuries and start treating all education as if it mattered. Maybe then all students will experience learning, and no one would leave school behind.