We’ve been given a first look at the new AzMERIT results from the tests students took in spring. They haven’t been broken down in granular detail, but we know how students scored at each grade level in math and language arts. The numbers look reasonably good. Basically, they’re a little better than they were the year before. No question, up is better than down, but does that mean Arizona students have improved in math and language arts? It’s not an easy question to answer. Let me throw out a few ideas without trying to arrive at any solid conclusions.
This is the third year the state has given students the AzMERIT test as a replacement for AIMS, and that means it’s the second year teachers have been able to teach to the new test. The first year, teachers didn’t have much of an idea what the test was like, so when it came to test prep, they were like generals fighting the last war. They had been teaching to the AIMS test for years, and they didn’t know how to change their strategies to help their students with AzMERIT. The second year they knew more about how the new test was structured and what kind of questions the students would be asked, so they made an effort at tailoring their test prep to the task. The third year, with the previous year’s experience under their belts, they refined their test prep technique a bit more. Which begs the question: do this year’s higher scores reflect an improvement in students’ achievement or their teachers’ test prep proficiency?
Whenever students are taught how to take a specific test, the results are thrown into doubt. Are students learning the concepts behind the test questions, or have they simply become more adept at answering the questions? Our obsession with yearly results on high stakes tests means the results people value so highly don’t mean much. Worse, the tests distort students’ educational experience by making teachers focus on narrow sections of the curriculum at the expense of equally important areas which aren’t on the test. You can’t blame teachers for spending an inordinate amount of time on what will be tested, even when they know their overemphasis on the tested material does their students a disservice. Their individual evaluations and the state grades their schools receive hang in the balance. The scores are too damn important to let giving their students a comprehensive education get in the way.
If we want to monitor students to get a sense of how they’re doing on their basic math and language skills, a better way is to test student achievement every few years in selected grades — and separate the scores from funding and school grades.
Actually, we have a test like that, the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) which has been given to a sampling of 4th and 8th grade students across the country every few years since the 1970s If there’s one test educators tend to agree has a reasonable amount of validity, the NAEP is it. Interestingly, in the last round of NAEP tests in 2015, Arizona students improved everywhere except in 4th grade math where the score dipped slightly, while the overall national scores went down. If Arizona wants bragging rights for improved student achievement, the NAEP results are the place to go.
But that brings up another question about our improved numbers on both the NAEP and AzMERIT tests. Do the students taking the recent tests represent the same socioeconomic groupings as with previous tests? If Arizona’s demographics have shifted over the past few years, the results could shift without a significant change in the achievement level of individual students.
Look, for instance, at Arizona’s Mexican American population. The influx of immigrants has slowed in recent years. More Mexican Americans have left the state than have moved here. As a result, more of Arizona’s Mexican American students were born in the U.S., and more of those who came from elsewhere have been in the country for a number of years. That means the current students are likely to be more proficient in English and have spent more time in U.S. schools than the population a few years ago. You would expect them to score higher on the state tests than a group with overall lower English skills and fewer years of U.S. education. A shift in the student population in other socioeconomic groups over the past few years could also result in changed scores without a significant change in the level of individual student achievement. It would take an extensive, detailed analysis of the changes in Arizona’s student population, then a similarly detailed study of how various student populations performed on the tests to separate changing demographics from increasing test scores—and after all that work, the conclusions would be tentative at best.
Evaluating the AzMERIT results, or any high stakes standardized test results, is tricky business. The most important thing we can learn from high stakes testing is that we don’t learn much from high stakes testing. Oh, and we learn that higher family income results in higher test scores, but we already knew that. Now, if Arizona test scores keep climbing on future NAEP tests, it may be time to say we’re doing a better job educating students in the areas of math and language arts. If the state’s demographics don’t change, that is.
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2017.
The fourth grade NAEP tests lack the significance that you apply to them. Those fourth graders were in first grade when the scores you compare them with were racked up. They are completely different students.
However, the 8th graders were in fourth graders in 2011 and we know what their test scores were. We are comparing largely the same students. Arizona had the largest gains in the nation from 2011 fourth grade to 2015 8th grade.
Our Black students placed number one in the nation in math as 8th graders after placing 6th as 4th graders. Our Hispanics placed 11th after placing 35th as fourth graders. Our white students placed 6th after placing 20th as fourth graders. We did pretty well in reading too.
Probably the best indication of our school system was done by Hingus at the Urban Institute. His analysis placed Arizona 13th in the nation.
“Whenever students are taught how to take a specific test, the results are thrown into doubt….”
Teaching to the Test is a bogus argument. In fact, if the Curriculum/Assessment Examination, AzMerit, covers the necessary body of information per Subject Area required for a Student to achieve their Career Goals as well as a measure of Teacher/Administrator Accountability, then by all mean…Teach to the Test!!!
Local Control of Public Education, generally, has been a dismal failure!!…hence the move, by Parents, of their Children, to Charter/Private Schools. We need to turn this around via a National Curriculum/Assessment Examinations. AzMerit is a move in the right direction.
National Curriculum? Unconstitutional and dangerous.
We are a republic. The tenth amendment of our Constitution is clear, any power not given to the federal government is to be exercised by the states. Nothing ambiguous there. There cannot be a national curriculum or federally constructed assessment exams any more than states can declare war on a foreign nation.
The abject failures of NCLB and Race to the Top are glaring reminders of the outcomes to be expected when the federal government decides to flaunt the Constitution with poorly conceived schemes to make an end run toward establishing a national curriculum.
Take away the constitutional issue and consider what a federally mandated national curriculum would look like given the wild swings in administrations (Obama, Trump) and Secretaries of Education (Duncan, DeVos). Imagine a national curriculum developed by either of the above Secretaries of Education or dominated by right wing ideologues or left wing activists; Texans or San Franciscans.
Like I said, we are a Republic and for good reason. The disturbing notion of a federally designed national curriculum presents one good example of the brilliance of our revolutionary founders in designing our Republic and writing our Constitution.
Mr. Spanier: FYI: US Constitution, Article 1; Section 8, Paragraphs 1 and 18.
Mr. Saitta,
US Constitution, Article 1; Section 8, Paragraphs 1 and 18. will not work as a means to override the 10th Amendment. That argument will be dismissed as tautological and the primacy of the 10th amendment will be upheld.
So you say!!!…and….a failing System of Public Education is a National Security Issue that both the President and Congress have the Constitutional Authority to Address.
This is a joke, Francis, right?
You want THIS president and THIS congress to intervene in the states’ Constitutional right to provide public education under the guise of a national security threat?
Really?!
Will the nation’s students be forced to sing the Internationale each morning and worship Putin?
Too funny.
Mr. Spanier: You are correct about this “President” and this Congress…and that we are a Republic where the Voters ultimately decide the course of action…..and given that….
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”….. Abraham Lincoln
Let’s see….
Federal Power: Trump et al.
State Power: Ducey et al.
Local Power: the TUSD Board
Frying pan, fire, furnace. Take your pick. Sound education will not survive at the hands of ANY of them. It may not conform to Democratic Party orthodoxy, but in this region Independent and Catholic schools that step outside of the forced mismanagement of federal, state, and local education governance do best in delivering valid academics.
For an interesting thought experiment, try re-reading Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and asking yourself how much of what he says about the weaknesses in post-revolutionary France’s political structure may apply to us. It’s a frightening thought in a context where we’ve shredded so many of the traditions and institutions Burke thought were necessary to provide a ballast and stabilizing influence to the democratically elected portions of the British government.
“The will of the many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice. A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates (in contemporary America, you can sub in “plutocrats”) is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty millions.”
Fslafe
Can’t dispute your evaluation of failing governments or which is worse in AZ or Tucson. But our state and local education authorities are hardly the norm and there are far better systems in other cities and states. But the proposal to design, implement and enforce a national curriculum takes us from one bad state of affairs locally to an unconstitutional federalized system that becomes even more horrific considering this administration and its Secretary of Education. We live in the worst case scenario with Trump and DeVos in power. Presidents and administrations change but the dangers of a nationalized education system are real whether it’s Obama-Duncan or Trump-DeVos.
Mr. Spanier: With all due respect, you have an Egregious/False Notion of National Curriculum (Common Core ) Standards!! They are not IMPOSED by the Federal Government, but, in fact, Developed and Voluntary Adapted by he States Themselves. Please….Please GET THE FACTS before you Criticize!!
http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-sta…
The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade.”….” Forty-two states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) have voluntarily adopted and are moving forward with the Common Core.”…Recognizing the value and need for consistent learning goals across states, in 2009 the state school chiefs and governors that comprise CCSSO and the NGA Center coordinated a state-led effort to develop the Common Core State Standards. Designed through collaboration among teachers, school chiefs, administrators, and other experts, the standards provide a clear and consistent framework for educators.”…
Francis,
I never once conflated your call for a National Curriculum with the Common Core … apples and oranges. Common Core died its own slow death but not because it was seen as part of a movement to develop a national curriculum.
There is a profound difference between states cooperating to develop their own “consistent learning goals” in concert with other states and your call for developing and imposing a national curriculum from the federal agency level to the states and LEAs.
“Local Control of Public Education, generally, has been a dismal failure!!…hence the move, by Parents, of their Children, to Charter/Private Schools. We need to turn this around via a National Curriculum/Assessment Examinations.” Your words.
Or do you have something else in mind you would like to share?
You’re blaming starving children for not having food with these dumb arguments about who controls schools. States that fund their schools adequately get good results. Segregated Arizona? You can forecast test proficiency by zip code. And Huppenthal, you’ve got some nerve to even comment when you’ve dedicated your life work to undermining our schools and the pblica confidence in them.
Agreed, Rick Spanier, on NCLB, RTTT, and on the inadvisability of a national curriculum.
The way to get valid education is not by creating top-down mandates, it is by getting fully educated people with a genuine mastery of and love of their subjects into classrooms. You don’t get that by paying them what teachers are paid in too many states, and, though certification requirements are better than no certification requirements, in the current “system” they are no more a guarantee that valid education will necessarily be taking place in every American classroom than machine graded standardized test results are a guarantee of same.
We believe that all our citizens should be fully educated critical thinkers — our enlightenment-concocted political structure and the ideology behind it requires it, demands it. But when you look at what “fully educated” properly means and how that is achieved, and then you look at the conditions in our society and in our schools, you know it is not currently possible. Four administrations worth of scorched earth federal policy have degraded and damaged educational programs and faculties in every state. Worker protections that guarantee families raising children some kind of economic stability have been undermined. Same with social safety nets. Several state level governance operations have gone completely off the rails (AZ, WI, KS, NJ…) and excellence in local governance is the exception rather than the rule. At this point, with these conditions, a system of universal public education that can produce a uniformly fully educated, critically thinking citizenry is an unrealizable dream, and the current federal administration seems likely to take conditions in a direction that will make that dream less realizable rather than more so.
What to do? Hard to say, in a context where neither major party is presenting policy proposals that are realistic or viable. Choice without any meaningful standards or oversight won’t work and cutting off access to alternatives to the public district system won’t work because large portions of the public district system are not working. One thing is certain: the Southern Arizona political strategy of lying to the public about what is really going on in public schools and how bad conditions and outcomes have actually become will only make our schools and our communities worse. Decision making by the electorate needs to be done based on facts, not ideologically driven propaganda and politically motivated lies. People who lie to voters or systematically suppress relevant information are not treating the electorate with respect.
“You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists, who […] treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.” (Burke) A very good gloss on much local political behavior relating to education governance, unfortunately.
Mr. Spanier: As you probably know, our “Founding Fathers” knew all too well that the Viability and Long Term Survival of our Republic is Directly Related to a Viable/Successful System of Public Education; teaching Citizens “to take the measure of a Man”; to Critically Evaluate Candidates for Public Office!!!
I never suggested that the Federal Government or Agency develop and impose “… a national curriculum from the federal agency level to the states and LEAs.
What I did suggest is that Constitutionally, Congress by providing for the “General Welfare” and the Executive’s National Security Responsibilities MUST step in if a State/Local District fails in efforts or is not providing it’s Citizens with a Quality Education. These problems must be Diagnosed and Remedies Instituted.
Efforts such as Common Core must have the support and encouragement of the Federal Government….”National Curriculum/Assessment Examinations”
Francis. I’ll be brief, blow it out your ass !!!
“States that fund their schools adequately get good results.”
I.e., all it takes to solve Southern Arizona’s conspicuous problems with education delivery is add more money to all public districts, including a conspicuously malfunctioning and mismanaged one, which unfortunately also happens to be the largest district in Southern Arizona, “serving” close to 50,000?
No, sorry, it would be nice if the problems we face were that simple and that easily solved, but that’s not accurate. It’s not sufficient to look at what’s going on in the schools. You have to look at the Board meetings and how decisions are made about where available funds will be applied. And that is a time consuming endeavor in a context where you will not only have to contend with changed order of agenda items and significant business buried at hour 4 and 1/2 of a five hour meeting and agenda items postponed from one meeting to the next because the Board President decided to absent himself from discussion and vote, but in order to get a complete picture of the budget you may also have to submit public records requests and engage in the equivalent of forensic accounting to figure out, for example, what was done with 301 and 123 funds, etc.
It’s time consuming business being a well informed citizen with enough knowledge of what’s going on in our education systems to be able to say with any confidence, “Just add more money and that will solve ALL the problems!” I’d be willing to venture that 99.9% of all the people locally who make that their constant litany have not put in the time necessary to know whether what they are saying is actually valid or not.
And this is exactly why, year after year we go nowhere. Too many so called experts can agree on nothing. And you guys mock Congress?
Francis,
I will bow out with the Simple Observation that your Initial Call for a National Curriculum Required for Our National Security is, on the face of it, a Far Cry from simply supporting the Common Core. If, you are simply arguing in favor of states aligning learning objectives without Federal overight and intervention or bribery, that is good enough for me. No harm, no foul.
The Common Core was a fine idea but nothing new, poorly designed and implemented. It was prone to attracting the worst of the worst, those hucksters including publishers, test developers and “school reformers” who would profit from the buckets of cash associated with the effort. Without further infusions of cash, the movement will continue to spiral out of existence and become another footnote in the history of US public education. Our National Security will not be effected.
Reply to So Broken, “And this is exactly why, year after year we go nowhere.”
In 1870, Dr. Semmelweiss became the first scientist to not only discover the germ causation of disease but to solve it by having his doctors immerse their hands and arms in a chlorine solution before delivering babies. Instantly, his hospital’s baby death rate dropped from 10% to 3%.
Instead of achieving fame, he was mocked and ridiculed by the medical profession and literally driven to insanity, losing his job and dying a horrible death in an asylum.
The medical profession was culturally trapped. Empirical data and logic can’t overcome culture, culture is just too strong – it is the body of iron rules that determine our values, beliefs and guide our behavior. Our brains are hard wired to follow to these rules, even though we don’t know where they came from.
In this year’s AzMerit test, the academic gains from 3rd grade to 8th grade were 25 points per year in math.
But, what if you redesigned the classroom, this 2000 year old artifact from the middle ages? What if you plunged your hands and arms in chlorine? What could you achieve?
My research suggests 100 to 200 points per year as a typical possible outcome for children in poverty and minority children. This would reverse the ethnic achievement gap in one year.
We know what not to do. Education culture assembled its best and brightest rolling out Race to the Top. Result: math scores went down for the first time ever, reading scores, previously on an upward trend, did not improve.
Will we allow education culture to spend another 100 years torturing teachers and the education system with “reform?”
They are not getting smarter, they are getting dumber:
Report by the Migration Policy Institute, 57% of limited English proficient adolescents nationwide are U.S. born. Up to 27 % of all LEP adolescents are members of the 2nd generation, and 30% are 3rd generation, meaning that many students educated exclusively in U.S. still cant speak English fluently.
http://www.proenglish.org/projects/english-a-immigration.html#sthash.zNiYJWiF.dpuf
54.9% of Special Ed students are Hispanic .
http://www.kidsdata.org/topic/97/special-needs-education-enrollment-race/table#
“Hard wire” would mean mental capacity.
The entire history of Affirmative Action has only succeeded in raising college graduation for minorities by LESS than 1%! It seems that if you didn’t have AA they might have done better.
Can you teach a child with an IQ of 79 Trigonometry ? This is the question you must ask yourself. Mental Capacity due to national/cultural isolation may not be something that can be changed easily.
Average IQ of Mexico is 89
Average IQ of Mexican/Americans is 89
Average IQ of Guatemala 79
IQ 80-89 Below average
Most violent crime is committed by males from this range. When the modal I.Q. of a group is in this range, one may expect trouble with many male members of that group. When the modal I.Q. of a society is below this range, raising it may increase violence (more police in schools). The causal mechanism behind the (statistical) relation between crime and below-average I.Q. is likely that lower I.Q. levels inherently tend to go with having
1. less impulse control,
2. being less able to delay gratification,
3. being less able to comprehend moral principles like the Golden Rule, and
4. being overstrained by the cognitive demands of society.
How fast and how high can you rise an IQ?
So, where exactly are you getting these figures from Postimpressionist?
I see that you have posted a link, but I get the feeling that link is phony.
Seems to me that you’re getting these figures from out of your ass. What you have posted proves that you’re surely thinking from there.