By Mary F. Barter, Ph.D.
February 16, 2005
Today
marks the beginning of the annual CSAP testing cycle with third-graders taking
reading and writing tests this week and math the next. Fourth- through 10th-grade
students will be tested March 15-24 on reading, writing, and math, and
eighth-graders will take an additional test on science.
According
to the requirements of No Child Left Behind, at least 95 percent of eligible
students overall, and subgroups of students as identified by ethnicity, income
status, English language proficiency, and special education enrollment, must
take the CSAP tests in reading and math for the district to meet Adequate
Yearly Progress – or AYP. If participation rates fall below 95 percent in any
category, the district and its schools could face financial sanctions that
would reduce the amount of funding available for reading teachers and other
tutoring and support programs.
That’s
one reason why the district hopes that every parent will support this year’s
testing program by ensuring that students are present and on time for their
tests, that they get a good rest the night before, and that they eat a
nourishing breakfast the day of the test.
Testing
doesn’t last forever. In fact, CSAPs take only a few hours of class time each
year. Third-graders will spend about four hours total on reading, writing, and
math tests, while fourth- through 10th-graders will spend a mere
five hours and 15 minutes on testing. Eighth-graders will spend a total of
eight hours with the addition of the science test.
Total
CSAP testing time is less than a day for all but our eighth-grade students, yet
the tests yield valuable information that teachers and administrators use all
year long to improve our educational programs and to address the specific
learning needs of individual students.
For
example, we are able to identify from the CSAP test scores those students who
need help with phonics versus those who are weak in reading comprehension. We
can identify and assist students who need more work on spelling, grammar,
punctuation, or organization in their writing. And we can identify whether we
need to work on communication skills or math facts to raise a student’s math
score from unsatisfactory to proficient.
From
an educator’s perspective, the CSAPs are well worth the time and effort our
students invest. Unfortunately, their role as an educational assessment and
diagnostic learning tool has been lost in the political rhetoric of educational
accountability.
The
Colorado Legislature established the Colorado Student Assessment Program to
hold school districts accountable for ensuring that students meet the Colorado
Model Content Standards – the state’s learning goals that each student is
expected to achieve at each grade level. However, CDE uses test scores to
reduce overall school performance to one word – unsatisfactory, low, average,
high, or excellent – for the State Accountability Reports. The SARs ostensibly
allow parents to compare one school’s performance over another, but the
rankings often conflict with information parents receive for the federal
accountability system established under No Child Left Behind.
NCLB requires school
districts to make adequate yearly progress by meeting specific student
performance targets. Each year, the Colorado Department of Education sets a
goal for the percentage of students who must score partially proficient,
proficient, or advanced on the CSAP reading and math tests, so that by 2014, no
student scores unsatisfactory.
Durango
High School – and therefore Durango School District 9-R – missed AYP in 2004 by
three unsatisfactory CSAP reading scores and 18 unsatisfactory math scores
among our ninth- and 10th-grade special-education students. As a
result, the high school and school district were placed “on improvement” status
under No Child Left Behind, although the high school received a “high”
performance ranking on the State Accountability Report. We’re not alone; 67 out
of 182 school districts statewide failed to meet AYP last year, and those 67
school districts enroll 88 percent of the students in the state of Colorado.
Furthermore, every school district with more than 5,400 students failed to make
AYP.
The
contradictions between the state and federal accountability systems and the
massive AYP failures statewide have created a high-stakes environment that have
some parents concerned about the pressure placed on their students to perform,
and that, in turn, has spawned a short-lived movement among Colorado parents to
boycott the CSAPs this year. A boycott, however, will not effect the policy
changes that parents want. It will serve only to reduce the amount of
information teachers need to provide their students with an effective
instructional program, and it could significantly reduce the amount of funding
available to provide our students with reading and math specialists and other
academic support services.
Rather
than boycotting a useful diagnostic tool that informs good teaching and
learning, I urge parents to direct their energies toward changing the state and
federal policies that have created the high-stakes environment they find so
objectionable.