NCLB and standardized testing

[Scurvy]

There are dozens of kids in our school (and hundreds in the system) that are either children of illegal immigrants or illegals themselves. They don't have any form of id. You can't track them, but they need to be in school. I understand this problem is much, much worse in states like California, where as much as 40% of the student body does not have any identification.

I can see how this would be a problem, but I would think it would make more sense to deal with this issue directly than to allow it to complicate an already absurd system like NCLB. These children are going to have school records - they are getting grades and presumably they will graduate. It seems to me that the obvious choice would be to either not allow children to attend school if they don't have a social security number or to attach an identification number to the school records of children who don't already have one. That way it would be easy to track individual students' performance throughout their education. If those are not possible, then the students with no social security numbers should not be considered as you are evaluating the performance of a school.

I personally track my childrens' progress using the ITBS, which all children in GA take for certain grades (I think it's 1, 3, 5, 8, etc). I'm assuming this is similar to MN. It's my job to track their progress as an individual, not the state's. They've also taken the Cogat and a few other tests to check their progress against a national norm, because I do have strong concerns about the regionality of testing.

I agree that it is your job to track your kids specifically. However, it ought to also be the school systems job to track them. If all students had an identifying number it should be easy to devise a program that could accurately track their scores.

But if for some reason it proved to be impossible to track them as individuals, then they should be tracked as part of a group. So while they might not keep up with your kids by name, they would keep up with the progress of "Noname Elementary Class A". Class A is tested in third grade and they average a score of 88. Class A is tested in fourth grade and their average is 75. You can assume Noname school isn't doing as good a job that year and something needs to change.

On the other hand let's say last year's third graders, Class A, scored 88. This year's third graders, Class B, score 75. According to the current system that means the school is worse this year.

What does it really mean? No one can really know without more context. What did Class B earn last year? If they got a 66 last year then they're actually doing way better this year. What did Class A get this year? Maybe they got a 92, which means they are also doing better.

The only way to accurately figure out how a school is doing is to track the progress the students are making. Ideally, each student would be tracked as an individual. Failing in that, then they need to track small groups such as "Noname School Class A". If this year Class A does as well as or better than last year, and Class B also does as well as or better than they did last year, you can assume the school is doing their job. If the groups do worse, you can assume something needs to be changed. That still won't be as accurate - kids will transfer in and out of the schools, changing the population somewhat. And of course it doesn't take into account things that the teachers can't control, like students that are having personal problems or the fact that the curriculum is just more difficult some years than others. But it's still better than what happens now.

I hate NCLB and I don't like the idea that a school "lives or dies" based on the results of a standardized test. But if you are going to "grade" schools that way, then the results really need to be as accurate as possible. The current method does not provide accurate results when it comes to how much learning is going on at a given school. All it does is show what one group of kids can do on one test. The next year it shows what the next group can do. It doesn't show if either group is actually improving from year to year, and it doesn't necessarily indicate anything about the quality of the education either class is receiving.

 

[friend of pooh]

Few things to chime in on:

Whoever said that all of their ESL and IEP students made AYP...how? If a child is in 5th grade and reads on a 1st grade level(reason for IEP) how can he pass a 5th grade reading test? Not possible unless he guessed very well or something fishy is going on.

AYP isn't only determined by test scores...do you all realize that? A school may have 100% proficiency on the test but still not make AYP due to attendance or graduation rate. How is attendance the school's fault? A teacher can't MAKE a student come to school...that is the parent's job.

Where is the accountability for parents???? Children come to school not knowing colors, letters, or numbers. Children miss 30, 40, 50 days of school (and not for a huge medical reason). Children attend 4 or 5 schools in one school year. How is all of that the teacher's responsibility?

 

[Scurvy]

AYP isn't only determined by test scores...do you all realize that? A school may have 100% proficiency on the test but still not make AYP due to attendance or graduation rate. How is attendance the school's fault? A teacher can't MAKE a student come to school...that is the parent's job.

Where is the accountability for parents???? Children come to school not knowing colors, letters, or numbers. Children miss 30, 40, 50 days of school (and not for a huge medical reason). Children attend 4 or 5 schools in one school year. How is all of that the teacher's responsibility?

Very true. Teachers and schools can only do so much, and if the parents aren't also committed to making sure their children succeed then the school shouldn't be penalized for that. Of course these days, parents may have to move often to find employment. And some children do miss lots of school because of illness. That isn't the parents' fault, but it isn't the school's fault either.

 

[Kickapoo Joie Juice]

Again--if testing is so important--why not use THAT and not a report card to determine if a child should be passing a grade or failing?

And did your child really take 3 standardized tests in the SAME year? Or was this different years?

Yes, one year they took the ITBS, the Cogat, and the ITBS. While some kids may be bothered by so much testing, it wasn't that big a deal for them.

Also, in this state you can fail consistently the entire year, but if you pass the CRCT (the ayp test), they'll promote you to the next grade. Personally, I think that's just wrong, and if I were a parent of a kid who was failing a grade that wouldn't be my choice (to promote them without serious help), but it does occur here.

 

[IDoDis]

It's not just special ed kids who are divided out into separate groups -- they have all sorts of subsets, many of them based upon race and gender. So they're measuring how 9th grade African American boys scored in math, how 9th grade Asian girls scored in science, how 9th graders repeating English 1 for the second time scored, etc. Sometimes these subsets contain literally only 2-3 kids, and those few kids can "throw" the results of the whole school.

Until you've actually dug into these figures yourself, you don't realize just how foolish the whole program actually is.

A subset of 2-3 kids cannot throw the results of the school. The subset has to have 25 students in it that have been at the school since Day 1 in order for those sub-set scores to count. However, there is no subset for "gifted" or "anglo/white". Smaller schools that don't have 25 students from Day in a sub-set don't have to count those scores for that sub-set.

There are dozens of kids in our school (and hundreds in the system) that are either children of illegal immigrants or illegals themselves. They don't have any form of id. You can't track them, but they need to be in school. I understand this problem is much, much worse in states like California, where as much as 40% of the student body does not have any identification.

It is intereting that school districts in other states may only cover a town. Growing up in MA I remember the school district for Brockton was very different than the town I grew up in.

I personally track my childrens' progress using the ITBS, which all children in GA take for certain grades (I think it's 1, 3, 5, 8, etc). I'm assuming this is similar to MN. It's my job to track their progress as an individual, not the state's. They've also taken the Cogat and a few other tests to check their progress against a national norm, because I do have strong concerns about the regionality of testing.

And due to identity theft, public schools can no longer use a SSN for the student's ID to track progress. They use to do this, but over the years, that system has been phased out.

Before states developed their SBA tests, we used to give the ITBS test each year. It is much easier than the standardized tests. Teachers don't get useful teaching info from the standardized tests though because they take so long to score (not just multiple choice like the ITBS). SBA also have the students writing short answers, essays, they have to draw graphs, tables, and have to explain in writing how they got the answer. If they get a math problem correct, but can't explain in writing how they got the answer (filling up 1/2 sheet of paper sometimes), they lose points. You don't have those issues with the ITBS where students can swing a lucky guess and get full credit if they get it right.

My point though, was that by the time the SBA scores come in, it's a whole new school year with different classes, content & different teachers, so it doesn't help individual students. The schools here just recently got their AYP standings, but the actual test results on paper won't be given to the teachers for another month at least. The written essay scores takes even longer.