Arizona’s AzMERIT scores have just been released, and the Department of Education has created such a detailed spreadsheet, it makes this old English teacher’s head spin. Everything is broken down about as far as it can be broken down—by district, school and grade, then within those categories by gender, ethnicity, economic status, disability, English proficiency. Did I miss anything? Maybe, I haven’t dug into the material in detail—and to give you an idea of what “in detail” means, just one page of the spreadsheet has more than 65,000 rows, with each row broken down into 13 columns. I’ll be spending more time plowing through the breakdowns to see what I can discover. In the meantime if you want to look for yourself, you can download the spreadsheet here.
So, taking a first, very general look, what do we learn from the AzMERIT scores?
Mainly, we learn that the rich stay rich and the poor, and their schools, are going to get blamed for their low test scores—again. Districts with lots of kids from high income families have higher passing rates than districts with lots of kids from low income families. In other words, there’s nothing new under the AzMERIT sun. The same was true with the AIMS test scores, and the same is true around the world. No matter where you go, socioeconomic status is the most reliable determiner of student scores on standardized tests. The only difference in the U.S. is, the gap between the high income/high scorers and low income/low scorers is greater than in most other industrialized countries (We’re also the only country that spends less on its low income than its high income students). But here in Arizona, conservatives pooh-pooh all those pesky facts. They tell us we shouldn’t play the socioeconomic card when looking at test scores. “No excuses!” To them, low scores from poor kids mean: (1) those lazy kids aren’t trying hard enough; (2) their schools are doing a terrible job teaching them and should be punished; and (3) their parents are lousy parents who don’t care about their children.
We also learn that the AzMERIT test is tougher than the old AIMS tests and the cut scores are higher. This year, something like a third of Arizona students passed AzMERIT. On the 2014 AIMS test, 61 percent passed the math section and 79 percent passed the reading section. Unless someone put stupid juice in the kids’ drinks last year, the overall difference in the passing rates is a function of the tests, not the students’ skills and abilities.
Not surprisingly, around the Tucson area, passing rates for the more affluent districts beat the state average. The above-state-average districts, starting with the highest passing rates and working down, are Catalina Foothills, Tanque Verde, Vail, Amphi, Marana and Sahuarita. The below-state-average districts, starting with the highest passing rates, are Flowing Wells, TUSD and Sunnyside.
Now here’s one interesting change I have to spend more time looking into. Flowing Wells and Nogales districts are always held up as the shining achievement stars whenever people question the correlation between socioeconomic status and test scores. “Yeah, but what about Flowing Wells and Nogales? If they can beat the odds and score higher than similar districts, why can’t everyone else?” This year, Flowing Wells scored just a few points higher than TUSD, and Nogales scored a few points lower. It looks like both are off their AIMS games when it comes to AzMERIT. Why?
With Nogales, the answer is simpler. The district was caught cheating on the AIMS tests, meaning their previous scores were bogus. The current scores are probably more valid than what the old AIMS scores. It’s an object lesson we’ve seen in low income, high scoring districts around the nation. All too often, the high stakes pressure on the high stakes tests leads teachers and administrators to try to raise scores by doing more than just teaching to the test to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. It moves them to cheat. And too often, schools and districts that are being honest are told they’re failing districts because, “Look at Nogales, or Atlanta, or Washington D.C. Why can’t you do as well with your kids as they’re doing with similar kids?” The answer is, those other districts were cooking the books.
With Flowing Wells, I honestly don’t know the reason the scores are down relative to other districts. Maybe it was just an off year for the district and next year it’ll return to its stellar performance. Or maybe the district had become expert at preparing students for the AIMS test, but it hasn’t developed similar strategies for coping with the new test. In other words, maybe Flowing Wells’ previous high scores reflected something other than the actual academic achievement of its students, and these scores are a more accurate reflection of how their students compare with students in other districts.
Enough for now. Everything I’ve written is tentative and incomplete, subject to revision and/or elaboration in further posts. There’s much more to be dug out of the data. Stay tuned.
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2015.
Is it possible to build slum school buildings in the foothills? Would that make you feel better about yourselves? Money will not fix education. But it seems like the easiest thing to whine about.
Next year let’s give the poorest 25% of school districts in the country, the amount of money Obama tried to “leverage” away from America on global warming, and I bet the test scores would be identical.
“…Unless someone put stupid juice in the kids’ drinks last year, the overall difference in the passing rates is a function of the tests, not the students’ skills and abilities….”
Mr. David Safier, with all due respect, remove your head from the sand…accept the current reality of the System of Public Education in Arizona! Students in Arizona, generally, particularly here in Tucson, do NOT have the “skills and abilities” necessary to be successful and achieve their career goals. With few exceptions, the Academic Programs are less than second rate with NO Teacher or Administrator accountability.
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 rigorous National Curriculum/Assessment Examinations.
I have to agree with Francis. There is no reason to throw good money after bad on this mess. Until we see real change don’t expect to see real money.
From that standpoint it appears to be public ed’s fault. Somebody needs to step up, take the lead and then clean house!
Public district schools fail poor children, but it’s not entirely for the reasons commonly given. It’s in part because these districts need the community at large to do the kind of service demanding accountability that vigilant, demanding parents do for districts in more affluent neighborhoods. You think district 13 and 16 boards and administrations would get away with the dysfunction the district 1 board and administration has gotten away with for decades? Go observe board meetings in these districts some time, or ask administrators what kind of a response they would get from their parent communities if they, say, staffed classrooms with a rotating crew of subs and then outsourced sub recruitment, or allowed parties within the district to disseminate misinformation about a matter relating to what kind of services, programs, and funding the district was legally required to provide for its sites. They’d be run out of town on a rail, and the students would then receive the kinds of services they deserved to receive.
We could have that kind of advocacy at the board level in TUSD, and that would probably translate, to some degree, to students that were better equipped to pass tests — but you have to know how to back the right board candidates, David.
Two lessons;
1) Don’t send your kids to TUSD or Sunnyside, unless you are illegal. Use Open Enrollment as thousands of others have fleeing the Grijalva’s and H.T. Sanchez.
2) If you want a good education for your children, work hard, succeed, don’t accept the liberal perspective that it is honorable to be poor and dependent.
Without giving away any secret information, it would be good to know the basics of this new test’s construction, because some tests are not very good no matter how much they cost or how many committees take part. After a rocky start, the AIMS test evolved and had its ups and downs. New tests yield scores that usually take a plunge as a new baseline for performance is created. During that time there is an opportunity for comment and criticism, and political potshots are easy.
I would suspect these scores are depressed simply because some people read what you write here and take your constant bashing to heart. How can a student have pride when you only have bile for them? Is this the sort of teacher you have always been? Thank goodness there are more of the teachers I had who truly nurture instead of always tearing something down.
Public education mindset is victimization, budgeting stinginess and parental failings. They have projected the failure back onto the students. At this point why don’t we make the tests easier and move more “good” kids to private schools? They are the leaders of tomorrow, anyway.
What, Again: You must have been drinking some of the juice that Mr. Safier talks about in his article!
One additional comment, Mr. What, Again: It is NO disgrace to be “poor” or dependent! Your notion of our Society is based upon private property rights, a market economy, and the accumulation of wealth.
These are the tools that you would have us use through which individual and national ambitions for freedom and happiness may be reached. This is, in fact, illusionary and productive of neither, and, in fact, destructive of both when pursued in contradiction to community interests and achieved on the miseries or credulity of others.
It is the very nature of Human Society to be dependent on each other, and, with that, comes the responsibility to lend assistance when assistance is required!!!
All this should be a part of our System of Public Education: respect for the diversity inherent in Human Society and a Social Responsibility to assist each other!!! Academics, are, in fact, secondary to this primary function of Public Education in our Democracy!
Sorry Francis but now you have espoused beliefs drawn from the Bible. That was, is, or never should be the intent of public schools. They were simply founded to teach children to read, so they could read thier bibles while their If only our federal government agreed with you. Once again we seem to have three or more sides to this discussion.
“In an 1813 report to the board of trustees, Henry Ould, the principle of the Landcasterian school, related the progress his students had made in reading and spelling:
55 have learned to read in the Old and New Testaments, and are all able to spell words of three, four, and five syllables; 26 are now learning to read Dr. Watts’ Hymns and spell words of two syllables; 10 are learning words of four and five letters. Of 509 out of the whole number admitted that did not know a single letter, 20 can now read the Bible and spell words of three, four, and five syllables, 29 read Dr. Watts’ Hymns and spell words of two syllables, and 10 words of four and five letters.”
One of the commenters is against “the liberal perspective that it is honorable to be poor and dependent.”
But that’s not the liberal perspective. The liberal perspective is that our public schools should give children born through no fault of their own into poverty the chance to get an education and have an occupation that allows them to realize their potential and lead constructive, meaningful lives in the community.
In order for our public schools to perform that function, (contra the AZ legislature) funding needs to be sufficient and (contra those currently in control of our largest local school district) budgeting needs to be transparent. As one teacher with experience in another poor urban district said, “Budgets tell you a lot about values. We need to change the values of our district.”
David Safier is smart enough and well-informed enough to know that the test scores in TUSD reflect more than just the SES status of the enrolled population. They also reflect the extent to which the district finds itself able to apply funds in areas that actually improve the quality of services delivered to students — and a related issue is the extent to which the district finds itself able to accurately represent how funds are being applied in a way that makes allocations transparent to taxpayers and to the desegregation authority, so meaningful conversations can take place about the relationship between budget and student benefit.
Unfortunately, until we get better leadership on the board and in the administration, it seems unlikely that either responsible allocations or transparent reporting will take place.
My fellow Veteran; if what you say is true about Mr. Safier then your comment would be gone and NONE of mine would be here for so many people to oppose.
The general public doesn’t oppose your comments. Just the staff. See what I mean?