U.S. Public Education Is Driven by High-Stakes Testing. Are the Proficiency Cut-Scores Legitimate?
Back in 2005, I worked with members of the National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education and Literacy to develop a short resource, Ten Moral Concerns in the No Child Left Behind Act. While closing achievement gaps seemed an important goal, to us it seemed wrong that—according to an unrelenting year-by-year Adequate Yearly Progress schedule—the law blindly held teachers and schools accountable for raising all children’s test performance to the test score targets set by every state. Children come to school with such a wide range of preparation, and achievement gaps are present when children arrive in Kindergarten. At that time, we expressed our concern this way:
“Till now the No Child Left Behind Act has neither acknowledged where children start the school year nor celebrated their individual accomplishments. A school where the mean eighth grade math score for any one subgroup grows from a third to a sixth grade level has been labeled a “in need of improvement” (a label of failure) even though the students have made significant progress. The law has not acknowledged that every child is unique and that Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) thresholds are merely benchmarks set by human beings. Although the Department of Education now permits states to measure student growth, because the technology for tracking individual learning over time is far more complicated than the law’s authors anticipated, too many children will continue to be labeled failures even though they are making strides, and their schools will continue to be labeled failures unless all sub-groups of children are on track to reach reading and math proficiency by 2014.”
Of course today we know that the No Child Left Behind Act was supposed to motivate teachers to work harder to raise scores. Policymakers hoped that if they set the bar really high, teachers would figure out how to get kids over it. It didn’t work. No Child Left Behind said that all children would be proficient by 2014 or their school would be labeled failing. Finally as 2014 loomed closer, Arne Duncan had to give states waivers to avoid what was going to CONTINUE READING: U.S. Public Education Is Driven by High-Stakes Testing. Are the Proficiency Cut-Scores Legitimate? | janresseger
