The Smarter Balanced Assessment Results Are In
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!
Set the bar low enough and even struggling scores look “good”. I’m not sure there is a reconciling to be done. This is an unproven test with no benchmarks, piloting, or analysis done before it was rolled out practically nationwide. Let’s not forget that this test is a tool designed to “assess” and “evaluate” teacher efficacy based on how proficient their students are with the common core curriculum.
It’s a load of hogwash. My wife and I opted our son out of the assessment last year and we’ll do it again this year until someone somewhere actually provides information showing that this test accurately measures something relevant to education.
^^^^What Brian said, $119 million times.
Anyone techie and have enough free time to make a graph showing the relationship between the poverty level and scores so everyone can visibly SEE the effects? Because apparently the link below isn’t enough…
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/08/30/severe-poverty-affects-childrens-brain-development-study-finds.html
Hey, if the East Side is failing, just dump it into Red Clay’s bucket. That insures no one gets an education. 85% special needs in some schools. How about teaching the kids to print and stop using crayons in math segments.
Playing around with the data. Was looking at Red Clay 5th graders and decided to list them by low income (PLI) numbers provided.
School……………………..PLI………..ELA 2015……..MATH 2015
North Star……………….3.8%………….92.2%…………..76.1%
Brandywine Springs…..9.0%………….85.4%…………..70.3%
Linden Hill……………….9.9%………….75.7%…………..59.6%
Heritage…………………22.1%…………60.2%…………..23.7%
Forest Oak……………..37.2%………….59.0%………….46.2%
Richey……………………39.3%…………43.8%…………..35.1%
Marbrook……………….51.4%…………41.0%…………..28.6%
Mote……………………..52.2%…………48.5%……………22.8%
Baltz……………………..58.1%…………35.0%……………13.5%
Richardson Park………61.4%…………29.5%……………..7.7%
Highlands………………65.2%…………32.2%……………10.0%
Lewis Dual Lang……..73.2%………….20.4%…………….7.1%
Shortlidge………………81.0%…………18.3%……………16.4%
Warner…………………..82.6%…………..5.0%……………..2.5%
It’s almost as if we could predict the test results before the test was taken! We must be psychic!
Ugh. I didn’t format that correctly. Here’s how it goes: School name, Low Income percentage, ELA 2015 percentage of students proficient, Math 2015 percentage of students proficient.
I am sure someone from the department of redundancy department can help you with a chart for poorer schools under performing.
They wouldn’t do that…it would take away their argument that their tests are a fair measure of school and teacher performance.
Pandora – check your email…
So… common core is basically an expensive, and complicated way to figure out which schools have poor students and which schools have wealthy students. Terrific.
Here it is:
correlation coefficient r = 1
Thanks, LG!
That chart says it all.
Send your kids to Private school like our elected folks do..
the charters are set low this year so next year they will make a vast improvement and be praised as Markell’s legacy. It’s all fixed to destroy public schools and privatize.
And I thought I was cynical! 😉
Now I’m going to have nightmares because I can see that happening, Appo mom.
What happens if you add some of the charter schools to the graph (which is scary and awesome at the same time BTW, and thanks for making it!)?
Its clear that the problem isn’t teachers, or schools, or the curriculum… it’s the poverty. But everything we do seeks to avoid that pesky little problem. I mean, what little we do….
@evolvDE: Indeed, it’s the poverty, and we do little to counter it. If anything is ever going to be done, it will be next spring, when the General Assembly has to deal with the recommendations of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission. No doubt there will be costs associated with their plan, and there will be no way to hide the hypocrisy if they decide there’s not a penny available for schools that last fall were labeled “priority.” Moving a half-dozen Christina schools into Red Clay and asking the locals to pick up the tab is not going to fly.
Meanwhile, in today’s NJ http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2015/09/02/business-leaders-dover-get-act-together/71611124/ we’ve got the same CEOs who have been whining for years about the declining quality of our graduates saying that the state now must look for “ways to slow down education spending.”
If I were a betting man, I’d say that the CEOS and the GA are going to decide that the best way to improve education in Wilmington and, dare I say, the rest of the state, is to spend less and work harder.
That chart is the most amazing visual I’ve seen ever. It’s right there. Clear as day. The data pandora laid out is one thing. But that visual. THAT FUCKING VISUAL. Thank you, liberalgeek! I’m going to post this on Facebook.
So, what is the problem???? Is it the greedy teacher’s union? The dishonest election the Red Clay School district just had? The self-serving elected officials who are former public school employees or, the self-serving elected officials who are former school board members who have a conflict of interest in the education of our children. We just cannot blame it on poverty!! Something is failing in our public school system.
Let’s get back to the basic of education. The three Rs of the foundations of a basic skills-oriented education program within schools: reading, writing and arithmetic. Do we need to extend the school years to include the summer months? What is the most important thing that we can leave to the next generation? One that is far better educated then the last one.
Hey Bob – graphs are part of the ‘rithmethic “R”. The one above shows an almost perfect negative correlation between poverty level and scores. There’s also tons of readin’ and ‘riting on the subject from researchers. You should look into it.
Poverty affects achievement. It really is that simple.
One thing I find interesting is the differing deltas between ELA and Math, regardless of PLI. I will have to ponder that. That might be an indicator of real differences in teaching.