Stack Up
By Barbara Hollingsworth Capital-Journal
Every state and national assessment counts in the No Child Left Behind era, and schools and students are feeling the increased pressure to perform
In the reams of data to flow from state and national testing programs are accolades and gut-wrenching results.
Kansas schools at the top celebrate their achievements with parties, early dismissal from school and even T-shirts. Principals at the bottom sometimes look at the hard work of their teachers or what their students go on to accomplish and wonder what the scores really mean.
Test scores gave Baxter Springs High School, in southeast Kansas, plenty to celebrate this year as it was named a No Child Left Behind National Blue Ribbon school. But even then, the principal knows that if his students slip — if they fall below the adequate yearly progress hurdle that is part of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation — public perception could quickly turn.
“All the sudden we’ve gone from the penthouse to the outhouse,” Jamie Carlisle, Baxter Springs principal, said of such a scenario.
Overall, Kansas students are spending more time in the penthouse.
State assessment scores are up. The achievement gap between poor students and their peers is narrowing.
And Kansas continues to stack up well when compared to other states. Scores on the ACT — the primary college entrance exam taken by Kansas students — remain above the national average. Kansas scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are also above the national average and among the best in the nation in some areas.
“I think we’re closing the gap, and we are raising the performance of all students,” said Kansas State Board of Education member Bill Wagnon, of Topeka. “I think those are really good signs. It tells me that teachers and principals are focusing on student learning like never before.”
But within the data, the performance gaps — though narrowing — – remain significant. Concerns remain that too much emphasis is being put toward preparing students to answer multiple-choice questions.
Then, there are the demands of No Child Left Behind, which asks far more of schools than just giving all students an opportunity to be successful. It demands that all students — regardless of generational poverty or the other issues that can drive down student achievement — succeed in achieving proficient or better scores on state math and reading assessments by 2014. Some worry that the 2001 legislation goes too far in penalizing and discouraging improving schools.
“You ask me which students do I want to leave behind? There aren’t any I want to leave behind. That’s kind of a no-brainer,” Carlisle said. “The reality is it’s going to be very hard to attain. I hope that people aren’t harmed along the way and that school districts aren’t harmed along the way.”
Reaching higher
Statewide, Kansas students are competitive on national tests.
On the ACT, Kansas graduating seniors last year achieved an average composite score of 21.7, which put the state above the national average and the averages of three of the four surrounding states.
Kansas does this with a participation level of 76 percent, compared to the national rate of 40 percent. Of the 11 states where at least 75 percent of graduating seniors took the test, Kansas students had higher scores than all but one state.
“Usually when you have more kids take it the scores go down, and ours are going up,” said Alexa Posny, deputy education commissioner for the Kansas State Department of Education.
Aiding the higher score, 66 percent of Kansas students taking the ACT had taken a “core” curriculum program in high school, compared to the national average of 56 percent. Overall, students who take that core course work of four years of English and at least three years each of math, social sciences and natural sciences post higher scores.
As is, the ACT scores provide limited information because the exam is only taken by students who sign up and pay. ACT test-takers are generally college-bound, so the results won’t reflect some of the state’s hardest-to-reach students.
For national comparative results, officials look to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card.
NAEP results show Kansas students performing ahead of the national average and at the front of the pack in some areas. Kansas fourth-graders posted the second-highest scores on the 2005 math test and ranked 12th on the reading test. Eighth-graders landed in the top five in the nation for their scores in reading and in the top 10 for their performance in math.
But like the ACT, these tests provide a limited measurement. There are no consequences for students or schools that perform poorly on the national test, and data isn’t available for school or student-level performance. Time isn’t devoted to preparing students for the NAEP, and the test is only given to a sample of students.
Pushing students
With state assessment tests carrying high stakes for schools but not students, school officials are finding creative ways to motivate students.
Among them, Baxter Springs principal Carlisle has a few bargaining tips.
“Time is their number one currency right now,” he said. “That’s the one thing I can afford that the kids want. Maybe it’s three minutes early to lunch every day for the next quarter. You don’t think kids want that? You bet kids want that.”
Carlisle’s worry is that of other principals: Students, especially high school pupils, dozing through a state assessment that has no bearing on their future. But for schools and districts, the annual state assessments in reading and math carry high stakes. No Child Left Behind calls for all students to be proficient in both subjects by 2014, although states use different tests and ways to determine what it means to be proficient.
On the way to 2014, a bar is set for adequate yearly progress, with the number of students required to be proficient rising each year. Schools and districts that miss the mark two consecutive years are listed as “on improvement,” and students are given the option to transfer to a higher-performing school in the district. Schools also can miss AYP if a subgroup of 30 students, such as black, Hispanic or economically disadvantaged students, doesn’t reach that mark. Sanctions begin to add up for schools that stay on improvement, including requiring schools to divert some federal funding toward tutoring services with outside vendors if requested.
“You have one way to win and a million ways to fail,” said John Poggio, co-director of the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation at The University of Kansas, which has created the state’s assessments.
Until 2006, the state math and reading assessments were given once each at the elementary, middle and high school levels. In some cases, Topeka Unified School District 501 would target additional help for fourth-graders preparing for the math test and for fifth- graders getting ready to take the reading assessment.
Beginning in spring 2006, the tests will be given to students in grades three through eight and once in high school. Steve Henry, general director of research evaluation and assessment, said the district may need to think more broadly but noted that the work of teachers in kindergarten and first and second grades is also critical.
“One can’t ignore that or fail to give a great deal of attention to it because that is the scaffolding to how kids are going to do in later grades,” he said.
Using the data
Increasingly, districts and schools use test data in making decisions, ranging from which schools need additional staff to which students should participate in after-school tutoring. From the state assessments, teachers receive detailed data about the types of questions where students struggle and can use that information to shape future lessons.
Like other schools in Kansas City USD 500, White Church Elementary teachers spend Wednesday afternoons planning how to improve instruction after students are released early — talks that are based on data. Teachers work days far longer than what is called for in their contracts.
“Teachers really know it’s one chance for some of our kids to be saved,” said Becky Bell, an instructional coach at White Church, which is also a No Child Left Behind National Blue Ribbon school. “We teach them now or we lose them forever.”
Increasingly, the tests are used to evaluate schools as much as students.
“That’s a little different mindset than a few years back,” said Silver Lake USD 372 superintendent Steve Pegram. “I think at one time when I was teaching, I got paid to present. I covered it. If they got it, that was great. If they didn’t, too bad.”
The state assessment tests are based on the state’s curriculum standards, so school districts have worked to align their own lessons with what the state lays out, especially the so-called “indicators” marked for testing.
“There has been a great deal of change in the field of education in terms of the sophistication of teachers and educators in understanding the complexities of instructional design and assessment and really getting more skilled with all that,” Henry said.
Too much?
Thousands of new test questions are being generated and tested as Kansas prepares to more than double annual testing to keep up with requirements of No Child Left Behind.
Complaints about the law are numerous. Some hate that students who don’t speak English are tested, while others complain about testing required of special education students. Others worry that the focus on reading and math could shortchange other subjects.
Among the critics, Monty Neill, co-director of FairTest in Cambridge, Mass., said better measures of school progress would include reviews of student portfolios and team visits to look comprehensively at schools.
“These tests are a limited slice of what kids ought to learn for knowledge and skills,” Neill said. “Typically, they do not do a good job of measuring the ability to analyze, synthesize, evaluate or create, and all of those are ultimately very important and should be real goals.”
Poggio, of the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation, said Kansas’ Quality Performance Accreditation system for evaluating schools, which predates No Child Left Behind, was a better direction.
“The Texas solution was never a Kansas problem,” he said of No Child Left Behind, an early accomplishment for the administration of President Bush, a former Texas governor.
Poggio worries that the state has narrowed the list of indicators that will be included on the tests. In recent years the number was reduced to 25, but the new tests will be based on about 15 indicators at each grade level.
While fewer indicators may be covered at each grade level, deputy education commissioner Posny said that more indicators will be covered overall as more grades are tested.
“I still believe we are covering the same depth and breadth,” she said.
The stigma
When Turner High School principal Michelle Sedler greeted students this fall, it was with the news that their test scores fell below AYP requirements.
“I don’t think that they accurately reflect our kids, and I told them that at the beginning of the year,” she said.
But Sedler knows it isn’t just schools looking at the scores and basing decisions on them. Parents called asking if the school had met AYP.
“I do know that parents are starting to learn the lingo and asking before starting to enroll kids in places or purchase a home in particular areas,” she said.
Of all the things the tests measure, there is a lot they don’t tell, such as students struggling with suicidal thoughts, pregnancy or homelessness, she said.
“You have kids who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, yet we expect them to perform on a daily basis,” she said.
And rather than focusing on continual improvement, AYP is the bar school districts must meet regardless of how much above or below that bar students began.
When Kansas City, Kan., USD 500 began its reform initiative First Things First in 1996, district staff prepared for the long haul. While graduation rates and student achievement have made strides, the district and some of its schools continue to be labeled on improvement.
“We would love to meet the mark, and we’re working toward it,” said Steve Gering, deputy superintendent. “We’re not moving fast enough, but we are improving.”
Barbara Hollingsworth can be reached at (785) 295-1285 or barbara.hollingsworth@cjonline.com.
Kansas State Board of Education member
“I still believe we are covering the same depth and breadth.”
ALEXA POSNY
Kansas deputy education commissioner