This week, the Texas STAAR test results made news for staying about the same as prior years. Last year, the state implemented dramatically different math standards in grades 3-8 and educators and state officials were worried that test scores would drop. Expecting the drops, Texas’ education commissioner went so far as to promise to keep the results out of 2015 accountability measures and vowed to suspend grade promotion requirements based on the tests. Instead of plummeting, the test results slightly improved for grades 3, 4, and 7, were flat in grade 5, and dropped slightly in grades 6 and 8.
Across the country, states that changed tests and proficiency levels along with academic standards are seeing dramatic changes in the percentages of students considered proficient. For instance, over the past year Ohio saw proficiency levels across grades drop from 75-80% to 35-40%. Third grade math test results in California dropped from 66% to 40%. Across the board, Illinois proficiency rates that were steadily above 50% preliminarily dropped to between 38 and 31%. Many other states that changed their tests and academic standards have not yet released their results, but they expect similar drops.
REUTERS/Yuri Gripas.
Coverage by both The Dallas Morning News and Education Week casts the lack of falling test scores in Texas as puzzling. The test scores should not be surprising because their stability is attributable to the fact that, unlike the states mentioned above, Texas did not change its state tests or performance levels, only its academics standards.
Results from Massachusetts, which recently introduced new academic standards and conducted two sets of assessments, are illustrative. Students took the MCAS tests —used in the state for years— and piloted the new Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test. The 2015 MCAS results were generally higher than the previous year’s, while results from the new PARCC tests indicate lower proficiency results.
So what does all of this mean? As more states release their results of new generation test scores, there are three things to keep in mind:
First, changes to academic standards will not cause dramatic changes in test scores in the short run. Academic standards can influence student achievement over the long haul, but effects after a single year are minimal. As seen in the Texas STAAR test results, Massachusetts MCAS results, and NAEP results, test scores that accurately and consistently gauge student achievement are stable year after year. Despite the Chicken Little cries, all three of these tests reflect slow increases over long enough time periods, demonstrating that they were minimally influenced by changes in academic standards.
Second, new tests aligned to new and higher academic standards will always lead to lower test results. The scores on new tests are not comparable to scores on older ones. Likewise, when states raise standards for proficiency, the percentages of students reaching those standards will fall. The dramatic drops in test scores that many states are seeing are due to these changes. Texas test results did not drop because its tests and its bar for passing them stayed the same. There is plenty of debate over what levels of performance should be labeled “proficient,” because establishing exactly where academic benchmarks should be is a judgement call. There should be no debate over whether test results will appear worse when states change tests and raise performance levels. In those states, test results will appear to drop, even though student achievement stays about the same.
While multiple, concurrent changes in education policies can be confusing, it’s important to keep them straight. Even though it can be difficult to differentiate between new standards, new tests, lower proficiency rates and new baselines for achievement, productive discussions about school performance depend on it. New academic standards can change the content students are taught and new tests change how we measure what students learn. There is enough controversy as it is over standards without conflating the two, and it’s important that educators, policymakers, and pundits keep these concepts straight.
Texas may actually be a bright spot in all this confusion. Because Texas STAAR tests are consistent measures of student learning, they are useful indicators for parents and the public. Rather than adding to parents’ confusion, the latest STARR test results should send a clear signal to parents that student and school performance are holding steady, and perhaps even improving.
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