HR 5: Student Success Act: Some Thoughts on the Testing
In this post, I offer some commentary on HR 5, known as the Student Success Act (SSA), a massive piece of legislation for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), that has been approved by the House Education Committee and is headed to the House for a vote possibly as soon as Friday, February 27, 2015.
The full text of the bill (597 pages) can be found here: student_success_act_text.
Specifically, my commentary in this post concerns the mandated standardized testing detailed in the first 52 pages of SSA.
As I read these 52 pages, I did so while thinking like a lawyer.
Here goes:
On page 26, SSA notes that states must select English and math assessments that are to be used to evaluate schools. However, one of the requirements of these assessments– assessments measuring student outcomes– is that such “be used for purposes for which such assessments are valid and reliable.”
Reliability in assessment has no tie to how the assessment it used. An assessment is “reliable” to the degree that it consistently measures something.
The problem for the federal government is that no assessment designed to determine student achievement can be “validly” used to grade a school or ateacher. Thus, states can challenge SSA on this point. The burden of proof then rests with the assessment companies– if they peddle the assessment as one measuring student achievement– even if such is supposedly “aligned” to a set of achievement standards– then to advertise the assessment as useful for measuring schools or teachers is to violate validity.
By the way, I have yet to read an ad from an assessment company to the effect that their standards-aligned assessments are useful for grading schools and teachers. To advertise as much is to become legally liable.
Also regarding assessment as delineated in SSA pages 26 – 31, it is possible for states to administer such assessments without using student names on the HR 5: Student Success Act: Some Thoughts on the Testing | deutsch29:
Big Education Ape: Tell Congress: Vote NO on H.R. 5 – The Student Success Act http://bit.ly/1JwDIz3
