To help parents understand how their children really work in school (but don’t make them feel bad in the process), state officials are moving this week to change the way they describe students’ performance in standardized tests.
Student scores rank in one of four categories in the annual tests of Mathematics, Reading and Science in California: Over-Standard; Standard MET; Standards almost or not.
But the consortium that manages smarter tests told California officials in a speech last September that the implications of these levels have been confusing. According to state officials, the consortium, including California representatives, suggested new tags: advanced, proficient, basic and inconsistency. The state board of education prepares for adoption in November.
But the advocacy groups raised concerns, saying the two lower-level clauses are confusing and potentially misleading. They also scolded the board for not seeking any public opinion, and then officials agreed to do so.
The process delays the decision to a Wednesday meeting of the state board of education, where officials can consider the work of focus groups including students, parents, educators and advocates.
According to state reports, some participants dislike the original term of the standard that is almost met and the standard is not satisfied, thus called fuzzy. Some people consider the term to be the lowest level of failure, noting that it is “usually seen as frustrating or exciting”, the report said. They don’t like basics or inconsistencies, and again, these terms are confusing.
Another set of tags also needs to be considered: While advanced and skilled tags remain the same, the proposed names for the two scoring categories are basic, below the basic.
Advocacy groups appear to support the latest proposals that the state legislature can adopt or further amend.
If approved, the new term will be the same as many other standardized tests, including a national assessment of education progress or NAEP, called a national transcript.
The debate about test tags is because state and state scores are still low and often fail to recover from pre-pandemic 2019. Mathematics and English test scores have been mostly stable nationwide or stable nationwide over the past two years, with results in the past two years – the results are roughly the same in Los Angeles and California.
The current proposal “is a step to provide parents with accurate situations in which children perform in schools,” said Natalie Wheatfall-Lum, director of education policy at the Auckland-based advocacy group Edtrust-West. “However, our focus should be on a clear description of these labels so that parents can understand their children’s performance in school and recognize that national assessment is a way to measure this.”
Given the achievement, teachers’ feedback and comparisons with peers may be subjective or vary by class, or from school to school, “standardized scores and their labels are important in shaping students and parents’ understanding of students’ skills relative to common standards,” said Sean F. Reardon, an educator in poverty and education in Stanford University. “to this end, [tests] It should have simple, transparent labels. ”
He added, “Again, “a four-category score tag that is once a year is telling the parents or students what the situation is, and that’s a very rough way. Teachers and schools can communicate messages to parents more frequently than national test reports. ”
Test debate; low achievement
Smarter balance tests in California are based on computers. If the student is performing well, the program sends more difficult questions to the student. If students perform poorly, the program asks simpler questions. The goal is to read students’ skills more accurately, but the tests represent only snapshots of students’ performance.
Experts acknowledge that the main goal of education is not high scores in standardized tests, which is a measure of imperfect depth and related learning. Nevertheless, the test provides a marker to help align students, teachers and schools with skills students should learn in each grade.
With this markup, students in California and across the country may do better.
According to the overall results of NAEP, not only are few students scored as advanced or proficient students, but few are able to obtain the basic ranking version of the test, i.e., the next level of reduction.
For example, in the latest results of this test, the percentage of Los Angeles students who scored or better in fourth grade math was 27%. For California, that’s 35%.
Of the fourth grade readings, 25% of Los Angeles students are proficient or better. California’s interest rate is 29%.
In the California test, students had higher abilities but were still lagging widely behind pre-pandemic levels of achievement, which was unacceptable at the time.
However, this reality plus research suggests that parents think their children do a good job in school – probably due to grade-grade inflation.
What does label mean?
Both proposed changes are intended to provide clarity. Even if the score itself is low, there is a positive way to express the goals of students’ performance.
Therefore, the term proposed in November did not send out unmet standard information, which is inconsistent. The term can also be too negative, one board member suggested. Perhaps “development” is a better choice.
Even the original term has euphemistic elements.
For example, this phrase criteria achieves almost all kinds of scores, some of which are actually almost proficient, while others are almost ranged in the lowest category.
In the November proposal, the underlying and inconsistent external objections aroused strong opposition.
“We are very concerned, including Edtrust-West, now children, the California Charter School Association, a coalition of better communities and teaching,” the groups wrote.
“The reality we face is that many students in California face great challenges when meeting grade level standards, especially many low-income students, people of color, English learners and students with learning differences,” the letter said. “The proposed changes to these achievement level descriptions will make the data even more confusing and misleading.”
Calling a basic or inconsistent score “will only help confuse the data and make families and advocates more challenging to increase the needs of our least-served students and ensure they get the support they need to thrive.”
Apparent compromise
If approved, the new category is “the most common label in 50 states,” said Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education, who was not involved in the decision. “My personal preference might be suitable for as many states as possible to use consistent labels.”
Robin Lake, director of the Arizona State University’s Center for Reshaping Public Education, said the latest recommendation is improvement.
“I do question that clarity may improve slightly is a distraction to the real problem: addressing the fact that California students are not mastering the core topic.”
If the four achievement labels used by NAEP are not meant to be exactly the same in the case of adoption in California. Typically, NAEP tags represent more rigorously evaluated exams. Based on studies comparing state tests with national NAEP exams, advanced or proficient NAEP is harder to achieve than in California tests.
Additionally, discussions at the November state legislative meeting included the concept that the public should still regard less than skilled students as working in grades, even if they may require additional support to meet the criteria for grade level.
This direction shocked advocates, who said they wanted families to receive clear messages when their children were not proficient.
Overall, students who are related to NAEP in California should study provide more precise examinations than NAEP. By contrast, the NAEP test tests a small percentage of students to perform state-to-state comparisons and does not send student scores to families.
That’s the ultimate important message, says Thomas Kane, a professor of education and economics at Harvard School of Education.
If the teacher explains the meaning of low scores to the parents, “Parents are more likely to listen to their children’s teacher rather than keeping the government form letter in mind in the email. But this is difficult to do, and many teachers avoid this. This will benefit teachers, parents and students to provide an excuse (i.e., request) to have a conversation.”
