I’m not even sure where to begin. I’ll start here:
Only half of Delaware students are proficient in English and fewer than four in 10 are proficient in math, according to results of the state’s tough new standardized test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment. (link takes you to the results)
Newsworks posts the charts:
If you’re looking for an in-depth article about these scores, I’d suggest reading the Newsworks article. WDEL also has a good round up.
State leaders eagerly pointed out in a press briefing that Delaware out-performed projections on the first Smarter Balanced assessment.
[…]
This is good news. But it comes with a caveat…
Delaware versus the other states
Yes, Delaware bested the Smarter Balanced projections. But as the above charts make clear, everyone is besting the Smarter Balanced projections.
I get that projections are, well, projections, but I have to wonder why they are so far off the mark. If everyone is beating the projections then I question the accuracy and value of these projections. Personally, I’m going to ignore them. They aren’t really telling us anything, but they do seem to be the big talking point.
The News Journal: “The Smarter Assessment is harder and different from any of our past state assessments,” said Gov. Jack Markell. “Although we raised the bar considerably, our students performed better than anticipated.”
WDEL: Markell said Delaware students outperformed state expectations in all grade levels in English and in all but one grade level in math. Those expectations were set based on a nationwide field test of more than 4 million students in Delaware and several other states last spring.
Newsworks: State leaders eagerly pointed out in a press briefing that Delaware out-performed projections on the first Smarter Balanced assessment.
Cape Gazette: Overall, Gov. Jack Markell and Secretary of Education Mark Murphy said they were pleased with test results. “Our students performed better than we expected,” said Markell, during a Sept. 1 press conference discussing results of the first round of Smarter Balanced testing. […] “We outperformed the Smarter Balanced estimate and have a new baseline moving forward,” Markell said.
For a test that touts setting a high bar it sure set a low one when it came to projections, and it bothers me that this bar is what’s being used as some sort of silver lining. It’s not. The projections, quite simply, were wrong. So, let’s stop holding them up as some sort of success. They aren’t. And if this is the best thing one can say about these test results, we’re in big trouble.
Both Markell and Murphy say they expect scores to steadily grow as students more of their high school careers learning Common Core in the classroom. A big reason why elementary scores were noticeably better than high school scores, they argued, was because older kids have spent most of their lives learning under the old model.
And I’d argue against that claim. NAEP has shown for years that high school scores show very little improvement. That’s a serious concern, and one I doubt will be solved with the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) or Common Core. (AGAIN, I am fine with National Standards!)
It’s no secret I’m not a fan of standardized tests, mainly because I think we’re using them incorrectly. We focus on handing out gold stars to schools who pass and slap “failing” labels on schools that don’t. But… maybe this is changing?
“There will certainly be an increase in regards to how the state allocates resources–and that’s really part of the value here–let’s understand which districts and which schools have the greatest struggles, and let’s make sure that we, as a state, are able to allocate resources to those students who need it most.”
Hey, that sounds like equitable funding. Could it be? I’m skeptical tho, since I lived through the Priority School fiasco. “Allocate resources” is usually followed with the threat of charter conversion, privatization and closure. We’ll see. That said, if these tests were actually used to help struggling schools (instead of punishing them) I’d change my tune.
When you look at the test score results notice how they line up with poverty numbers (PLI)? Of course, they do. We flippin’ know this and haven’t done a damn thing to address this situation. Wanna know how your school did on the test? You can pretty much ignore the scores and just look at the PLI percentage. Be sure to look at the charter schools’ scores.
Speaking of charters… what in the world? Can someone explain this?
East Side Charter (grade 5)
ELA 2015: 10.8%
Math 2015: 7.7%
ELA 2014: 66%
Math 2014: 70%
Kuumba Academy (grade 5)
ELA 2015: 41.2%
Math 2015: 22.9%
ELA 2014: 78.4%
Math 2014: 79%
These are the charter schools that are always held up as successes – Our Governor and former Secretary of Education repeatedly held up East Side Charter as a model for our public “Priority” schools. Now, as someone who doesn’t have a lot of faith in these tests I’m a bit conflicted. I want to just ignore the results, but the numbers above are quite startling. Why did these scores drop so much? Basically, which test is BS? Because one of them has to be, right? (I think both are, but no one listens to me!) Well, if we go by what our Governor and former Sec. of Education have said, DCAS was the bad test – which is why they replaced it with the SBA. If those supporting SBA believe this then I guess East Side Charter will now be labeled a failing School. So will a lot of other charters. Someone remind me… wasn’t one of Kuumba’s strengths its math program? I think it was, but what are they supposed to do now? Scrap it?
Hmmm… how will people reconcile these test scores with their charter school support? If there’s a silver lining here it’s that these scores are putting to rest a lot of charter school myths.
Delaware Dem summed it up: “Poor schools did poorly.” And by “poor” he means high poverty.
Note: There’s a lot of data here – there’s also a lot of data missing (percentage of special ed, ELL, etc.) – and I’m still pouring over it. Which means… I’ll probably be writing a lot more posts!