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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 4 of 4)
10-19-2010 @ 6:28PM
Miriam K. said...My high school class just had it's 40th anniversary.
From app. 50/50 white/ black student ratio, it is now 97% minority.
The prior principal drove away the alumni association ...she didn't want interference in her school.
The school was labeled failing ( less than 37% passing) and the new principal makes all the difference. He has instituted 20 minutes per day of reading for every student start to pull up grades. He has invited community involvement. We are going to resurrect the decommisioned greenhouse and start a green track. We also want to bring back "shop" so all kids can learn how to use tools...all theory and no practical experince is bad for ingenuity and self -sufficiency.
Donations are cheerfully welcome
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 6:37PM
sweetolemiss said...Why not do what other school districts are doing, and just teach the test all year long?
Reply
10-20-2010 @ 6:41AM
Mary said...As an educator, I find the "No Child Left Behind" law is doing more harm than good. I feel as if I'm not doing my job when I have to send a student to the next grade even if that student still has not grasped the basic concepts of a skill necessary for understanding another. I try to teach so my students will have something to apply to being able to able to succeed in life and maintain a career once they leave the confines of a classroom. Hopefully, what I teach and reteach will remain with them to apply when it's time for state-mandated tests. I spend time preparing for the test as the time approaches but its basically a review, then I hope and pray the test scores will successfully show my effectiveness as a teacher. I have always had high expectations for my students and even when parents complain that it's a little much, I refuse to lower my standards. I am not the best, but I strive to bring out the best in me and in my students.
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10-19-2010 @ 6:57PM
Bill said...I have a friend who QUIT, not retired, from her teaching position of over 20 years because she was tired of the middle school principal taking the under-achieving students out of her class in order to give them tutoring for the state tests. When my friend protested the principaltold hher that her course, home economics, was not important because the students were not tested on it. The principal has also done the same thing to the art and music teachers. This happened in Ann Arundel County, Maryland.
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10-19-2010 @ 6:56PM
Bob Rose said...In Georgia elementary schools are judged academically on the percentage of kids who pass the state reading test. To pass, one must score above the 32nd national percentile ranking. According to the NAEP, about 38% of fourth-graders are functionally illiterate. So a school where all kids score at the 35th npr, it would be the most academically advanced school in the state, even though not a single child could read at grade level.
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10-19-2010 @ 7:13PM
william said...everybody knowsthis is all about rerducing the intellegemce level to that of a chimpanzee
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10-19-2010 @ 7:24PM
samanthawiu said...Moral of the story we dont' want our children/students to think for themselves. We want them to pass a test the state needs to have them take. Parent really do need to help and work with teachers so that each child's needs are met both at home and at school. Times have changed from when I was in school and responsible to do what was needed to get the grades, not pass the tests. I am an educator and I LOVE what I do; the politics and standardized testing and numbers get in the way of me being able to do what needs to get done...educate each child. Those students with IEPs can not be "diagnosed" with anything by the teachers...we are not qualified to do that. We can see symptoms of ADD/ADHD but by no means do we diagnose students. I would LOVE to take a trip to the White House or Springfield and talk to legislators who are making decision for our students and schools without the least bit of knowledge of what it is like in a classroom or how to be a teacher. Education needs to be revamped. No Child Left Behind needs to be left behind. Parents, teachers and administrators all need to work together to help the student become a successful member society or we are going to end up with uneducated and unqualified people living, functioning, working and running this country in our future. IF we even have a country left to educate by then...
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10-19-2010 @ 7:36PM
bo said...THIS IS WHY THEY GET PAID WAYYYYYYYYY TOOOO MUCH.
LOWER THIER PAY CUT TAXES AND MAKE THEM TEACH OUR KIDS.. PERIOD. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH....
Reply
10-19-2010 @ 8:26PM
Angela said...bo, i just got home from work an hour ago and sometimes i go in on weekends to work in my classroom for a couple of hours. i spend half of my lunch time, 3-4 evenings a week, and either sat or sun planning, grading, cutting, laminating, hanging up work, cleaning my classroom, organizing the space, labeling, filing, making multi-level assessments, grouping students, finding interesting literature for students at all levels, typing parent letters, reading professional books, creating and fine-tuning lesson plans, recording data, etc, etc, etc, plans. i spend my summers taking professional development courses, developing curriculum for no extra pay, planning how i want to start off the new school year, etc, etc,etc. Iive been a teacher for 8 years and have my master's degree as a reading specialist. I work in a poor district and make $45,000. does that sound like a lot of money to you for my experience, education, and work load? i know people who never went to college, can leave their work at work, and they get paid more than this. so how dare you be so smug in your comment about how i, a teacher, get paid way too much. you truly have no idea what it takes to be a teacher, and you probably will never bother to find out.
10-19-2010 @ 7:59PM
Dave Aurand said...I haven't seen any one complaining about all the "F" schools of Florida turning into "A and B" schools over night! (one year to the next) Our schools in Florida have something that lets the students have MORE then an "A" !
Another thing being done is if you miss a question, you can substitude for one you got right! Where is this education?
I'm NOT a parent, but if I had a child going to public school, I'd be raising so much H*ll, that the principle would be having nightmares over it. I would either home school, or send to private school to make sure my child had a proper education. Don't use "you can not afford private school" either! Get rid of all your toys, and place your child FIRST! The rewards will be ten fold.
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10-19-2010 @ 8:02PM
F Ludu said...Too many tests so teachers are now "teaching to the test" . The kids learn by rote memory and learn nothing but stuff they need to regurgitate to pass the test. And do schools spend money to improve education? My school district just spent millions for a new football field, etc. but spent jack on school materials.
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10-20-2010 @ 2:00PM
pease said...Education went to hell when teaching became a job and no longer a profession.
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10-19-2010 @ 8:32PM
rolse said...I quit teaching high school mathematics in 1963 when it became very obvious that propagandizing, not educating, our young people was becoming the mission of our public schools. As control of the schools was removed from the people, local school boards were marginalized, eventually to the point where they really need not exist, mind control became the objective of the state prescribed curriculum. Sufficient literacy to comprenehd and accept the government message of unquestioning belief in, and reliance upon, those chosen as leaders was to be all that would be required. The process of a systematic "dumbing down" was about to begin in earnest, though it had begun in the late 1930s. It now can be counted as one more of the things our "elected" officials successfully did under the pretext of taking care of us.
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10-20-2010 @ 1:31PM
Randy Murray said...Your article brings attention to a national problem that, unfortunately, most parents will read as one isolated to Illinois. What most folks refuse to realize is the simple fact that public schools do not belong to the local or even the state level and especially not the parents of the children being dumbed down to meet minimum federal requirements. I invite you to check out my web site, www.voicefromthepews.com, my articles on education on www.NewsWithViews.com or read my book, Legally STUPiD: Why Johnny doesn't have to read.
RC Murray
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