Eva et al. flunk the fairness test
March 17, 2015
In the pre-Common Core era, we had a big problem. Most state tests measured minimal competency in reading and math. But we failed to communicate that to parents, so they reasonably thought a passing grade meant their child was pretty much where they needed to be. Little did they know that their kid could earn a mark of “proficiency” and be reading or doing math at the twentieth or thirtieth percentile nationally. Frankly, we lied to the parents of too many children who were well below average and not at all on a trajectory for success in college or a well-paying career.
Playing games with proficiency cut scores provided much of the impetus behind Common Core. States raised standards and started building tests pitched at a much higher level. Most states are giving those tests for the first time right now, though New York and Kentucky made the transition two years ago. As of 2013, New York’s tests were the toughest in the country, according to a new analysis by Paul Peterson and Matthew Ackerman in Education Next, matching—if not exceeding—the performance standards of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
That may solve the “proficiency illusion” issue. But now we have a new problem. Some education reformers and media outlets are already using the results of the new, tougher tests to brand schools as “failing” if most of their students don’t meet the higher standards. Note, for instance, the Daily News’s special report, “Fight for their Future,” which leads with the provocative headline “New York City is rife with underperforming schools, including nearly two-thirds of students missing state standards.” This line of attack closely resembles the talking points of Eva Moskowitz and Jeremiah Kettridge of Families for Excellent Schools, who both promote the notion that in New York, “800,000 kids can’t read or do math at grade level” and “143,000 kids are trapped in persistently failing schools.”
These statements are out of bounds, and reformers should say so. They validate the concerns some educators voiced all along: that we would use the results of the tougher tests to unfairly label more schools as failures.
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Let me be clear: I don’t mind calling schools out as “persistently failing.” Such schools exist, and they should be subject to aggressive interventions, including closure. And I’d be thrilled if they were replaced by high-performing charters like Eva’s Success Academies. But as I’ve argued ad nauseam (and the Shanker Institute’s Matthew Di Carlo has patiently and persuasively explained for years), evaluating schools based on proficiency rates alone is bad math. (Moskowitz and Kittredge define a “persistently failing school” as one in which 10 Eva et al. flunk the fairness test | The Thomas B. Fordham Institute: