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No Child Left Behind Because Tests Are Dumbed Down?
Filed under: In The News, Research Reveals: Big Kids, Research Reveals: Tweens, Research Reveals: Teens
Chicago has lowered the requirements for kids to pass standardized tests. Credit: Getty Images
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus ...
Anyone? Anyone?
Invented bubble gum, you say?
Oh, what the heck. Close enough for public school.
Children generally rise to the level of expectations, and, if they don't, well, you can always lower the expectations.
Look at Illinois. The Chicago Tribune reports kids there have had trouble passing annual achievement exams. So state officials simply cut the number of points required to be considered "proficient."
Four years ago, according to the Tribune, fifth-graders needed 36 to 56 points (about 64 percent) to pass the reading test of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT). Now, they only need 31 points (or 55 percent) to pass.
Third- and fourth-graders needed to score 61 percent to pass their reading tests. Now, that's down to 54 percent.
State officials tell the Tribune this is just routine number crunching. But educators are not so sure.
"It absolutely does not make sense," Sherry Rose-Bond, a Columbus, Ohio, school testing official on the board of directors of the National Council on Measurement in Education, tells the Tribune.
Rose-Bond, who also is a past president of the National Association of Test Directors, says while slight adjustments are part of routine statistic procedure, current scores are poppycock.
"You're not going to have this steady downward tangent," she tells the newspaper.
Part of the problem is money. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools risk losing federal dollars and other sanctions if too many kids flunk math or reading tests.
The percentage of the kids who need to pass to satisfy the federal law is increasing -- strangely, just as state expectations are being lowered.
Currently, 77.5 percent of Illinois students have to pass the tests, the Tribune reports. That's up from 70 percent last year. By the 2013-14 school year, all students across the United States will be required to pass for their schools to avoid sanctions.
Some teachers worry they are no longer educating students, simply training them to take standardized tests.
The situation was satirized on "The Simpsons" last year in the episode "How the Test Was Won," when precocious second-grader Lisa Simpson has an intellectual meltdown under the pressure of taking a standardized test.
Meanwhile, her underachieving brother, Bart, and his fellow dimwits are sent off on a fake "field trip" so they won't drag down test scores and threaten the school's federal funding.
Illinois State Board of Education officials insist that's only something that would happen in a cartoon. They tell the Tribune expectations are not being lowered, and, if anything, they are being raised. Questions are getting tougher.
When test questions are easier, more correct answers can be required to pass. When test questions are tougher, fewer correct answers can be required.
"We are now using the model used throughout the industry," Rense Lange, a psychometrician at the state board, tells the newspaper. "We find that the new model fits well, and we have no reason to think there is anything wrong."
Or, maybe the bar is being lowered so the slower students out there, as "Simpsons" Principal Seymour Skinner puts it, "won't weight down the test with your numbskullery and ruin the future of those students who are our future."
Whatever. It's hard to test people's motives with a No. 2 pencil.
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ReaderComments (Page 2 of 4)
10-19-2010 @ 4:23PM
afgymnast96 said...I actually have a friend who was put in special ed in 1st grade because he couldn't read very well... he only got put in to regular classes this year! He's making straight B's and might even move in to a few honors classes if he can get his grade up a little more.And they said he had a learning disability!
10-19-2010 @ 5:48PM
dyzneefan said...ADHD is a medical condition. Children with ADHD are NOT put into "special education" rooms. Children with true ADHD are given classroom modifications in order to help them achieve despite their condition.
10-19-2010 @ 3:19PM
byron said...thank god i went to Eton. American schools, i have noticed, seem to be more about athletic activities than intellectual integrity. while we had physical education and team sports as well, the majority of our classes focused on classical education. my american friends, even those whose children are in private institutions, tell me foreign languages arent introduced until secondary school, and latin is completely gone, while my children speak english, french and take courses in latin. keep dropping your standards america, it makes us feel better about losing you as a colony.
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 6:35PM
Joseph said...And yet you failed to capitalize 13 words in your statement, and even missed an apostrophe. Jolly good show.
10-19-2010 @ 11:00PM
Robbie said...Byron also missed at least one comma, and the structure of his last sentence(s?) was atrocious! I'm glad I went to school in America, where they (used to) teach English!
10-19-2010 @ 3:22PM
Jim said...I've got news for you all. It is not going to get any better. In fact, due to the concept of teaching to the lowest common denominator, your children have no hope of getting a good education in a public school today.
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 6:30PM
David S. said...You can always home-school or pay for private school. There are choices if you don't like the public school system.
10-19-2010 @ 6:41PM
Nona said...Children have every expectation of getting a decent education in our public schools, but the parents MUST get involved! This not only means tracking their childrens' progress in school, attending parent-teacher conferences and etc., but enforcing discipline and good study habits. My mother taught high school in an inner-city school; she said that the lack of parental involvement was her #1 problem. A teacher can have excellent teaching methods, and an excellent rapport with the kids, as my mother did (she is now retired), but if they aren't prodded into doing their homework at home they will still lose out.
10-19-2010 @ 7:38PM
Kristi said...Parental involvement is key. Unfortunately many parents are working two or more jobs and have more than one kid in schools. It is hard for these folks to put a lot of energy into academic education at home. However, they can read to their kids, even older kids like it, and pay attention to their childrens test scores and whether homework is getting done. I am lucky to have the time and the money to have homeschooled for several years and now stay home to keep track of my kids in school. When they don't get homework, I have them do practice work in math, reading comprehension and writing for 20 minutes each day. Workbooks are available at your local bookstore and there is also a ton of stuff online. I also have an hour of reading each night when we can fit it in. Parents have to establish the expectation of getting A's and B's and working hard toward whatever you can achieve just for the pride of ownership.
10-19-2010 @ 3:26PM
Jim said...If your child has all of those "diseases" than he/she should not be going to the same school as children without those "disabilities". He/she holds back all the other children. Our system has become insane, all in the name of not harming a child's "self-esteem". Oh, and if your writing skills are an indication, I'd say you probably didn't do so well in school either, did you?
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 3:40PM
Greg Thompson said...Columbus in 14 hundred and 92? Hm, do you mean Columbus in 1492?
Would you say one hundred and 49 dollars or one hundred forty nine dollars?
Nuff sed.
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 3:47PM
Jeremy said...Uhh...the "14 hundred and 92" comes from a school rhyme used in education "in 14 hundred and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Congratulations for both not realizing either syntax is grammatically correct or not knowing this pretty common school fact and making YOURSELF look like the uneducated one.
10-20-2010 @ 12:07AM
LadyZ said...Greg is correct. The best way to check yourself is when you write
a check. The word "and" always comes after the dollar amount and
before any "cents".
10-20-2010 @ 1:08AM
Robbie said..."Lady Z:" Did you not read Jeremy's comment? Please back up.
10-20-2010 @ 2:27PM
LadyZ said...Actually this comment is for Robbie and Jeremy regarding the Columbus poem. The poem could just as easily been taught:
In fourteen hundred ninety-two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
If you will count the syllables in each line has 8 syllables, making it a more concise poem. Using the word "and" was probably taught by a social studies teacher who would be more concerned that students learn the fact for a time line than an English or math teacher who would be concerned with other mechanics of writing.
In my previous post I alluded to check writing but fail to give an example. If you were writing a check for $268.47 it would look similar to this:
Two hundred sixty-eight &(and) 47/100 -------------dollars
Please realize I'm not picking on Robbie or Jeremy. Many people make this mistake from pre-school teachers to high school principals to Presidents of the United States. So Robby and Jeremy, you are not alone and kudos to you, Greg Thompson.
10-19-2010 @ 3:35PM
Sally said...Schools suck these days............they push the kids through, so they could get their money.........My daughter last year, had 64 E's...........between homeworks, and tests.........she should have NEVER passed...........but they passed her, and she graduated with all C's and above!!!!!! If you ask her a math problem, she CANNOT tell you the answer......this is where our kids are going.................It's a disgrace...........
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 3:47PM
Jeremy said...I've heard it called many things by teachers, none of them pleasant: "Every Child Left Behind" or "No Child Allowed to Succeed" for example. We need to drop homogenized education and do what some European and Asian countries do. When you're old enough (say 14 or so) you can test up into advanced programs and not have to go through colonial history for the 8th time because say Eddie the idiot who sits in the back of class and carves into his desk "just don't get it."
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 4:11PM
Tom said..."Illinois State Board of Education officials insist that's only something that would happen in a cartoon. They tell the Tribune expectations are not being lowered, and, if anything, they are being raised. Questions are getting tougher."
That attitude/argument is such crap. This "dumbing down" goes on in school systems all the time.
Two years ago, Austin, TX had a high shool that was unable to meet the required percentage of the number of students who could pass the standardized achievement test.
Rather than replace that school's administrators and teachers, the AISD voted to close that school and disperse the students to other schools in the district.
That way, the scores of the failing students would be diluted by the scores of the other students, and the AISD would not lose its funding.
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 4:26PM
S.Savich said...Public schools are a waste of time now-a-days. They pass everyone: the geniuses and the kids who cheat, skip, and fail. I knew this girl who had one A and the rest were C-F, yet she's now in the next grade level. And this was from a supposed 'Excellent' school. Schools basically support laziness and that it's okay to skip classes. Why try and study for a test when you can fail and move on anyway? It's so messed up anymore, which is why I was transferred to homeschooling, where I have to use my brain to pass the tests and actually have to study.
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 4:27PM
Don Shook said...Today's students lack an essential ingredient: Discipline-both at home, in the classroom and in their everyday lives. As long as there is a pc nanny state in vogue this will remain the case. Kids have no challenges to improve because they realize if they don't, someone (parents, teachers, government) will excuse them and take care of them. That's why so many grow up almost unable to function away from the cell phone and other electronic "aides". Let's bring back the paddle and chores - then watch those averages soar.
Reply