Jersey Jazzman: NJ Court Strikes Down Graduation Test; An Opportunity to Re-Think Testing?

Jersey Jazzman: NJ Court Strikes Down Graduation Test; An Opportunity to Re-Think Testing?

NJ Court Strikes Down Graduation Test; An Opportunity to Re-Think Testing?

Miss me?

Yesterday, a New Jersey appellate court struck down regulations that required students to pass two PARCC tests -- the statewide tests implemented a few years ago under the Christie administration -- as a requirement to graduate. Sarah Blaine has an excellent legal analysis you should read about the ruling. Let me add a few thoughts to it, coming less from a legal perspective and more from an educational one:

SOSNJ has posted a copy of the ruling on its Facebook page. The ruling notes that back in 1979 the NJ Legislature called for "'a statewide assessment test in reading, writing, and computational skills . . . .' N.J.S.A. 18A:7C-1. The test must 'measure those basic skills all students must possess to function politically, economically and socially in a democratic society.' N.J.S.A. 18A:7C-6.1."

As Sarah points out, state statutes are usually vague when it comes to things like setting standards; functioning "politically, economically and socially" will mean different things to different people. It's also not clear why the Legislature thought a test was necessary for graduation. Was it to uphold the value of a New Jersey diploma by making sure all holders could meet a certain standard? Was it to hold districts accountable for their programs? Was it to make sure the state, as a whole, was providing the resources needed for students to have educational success?

Or was it possible the Legislature never really thought about the purpose of the test? I'm not sure; I do, however, know that in the time since the passage of the law, psyshometricians have been giving long and hard thought to something called validity: in the most basic terms, whether a test measures what we want it to measure, and whether it should be used for the purposes in which it is used.

The passage of the federal No Child Left Behind in 2002 act gave us gobs of test outcome data, which has been used by policymakers and researchers to evaluate and justify educational policies. Unfortunately, many of these folks have failed to ask the most basic CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: NJ Court Strikes Down Graduation Test; An Opportunity to Re-Think Testing?