More support for high-stakes tests
The NYT apparently thinks that new-found support for high-stakes exams means the educational "terrain" has just gotten more precarious. That's what their geologic analogy seems to indicate, anyway. Me, I see it as cause for celebration:
Two new studies make the case that do-or-die exams — which decide whether students graduate, teachers are dismissed or schools are shut in more than half the states in the nation — have brought about at least a modicum of academic progress, especially for minority students who may get scant attention otherwise.
The studies entirely contradict what some other scholars have found and are bound to feed an already fiery debate over the phenomenon known as high-stakes testing, a course of educational change that teachers resent, the Bush administration embraces and states are hurriedly adopting.
Glad that they noted that the debate is "already fiery", although testing critics will no doubt continue to repeat anti-testing myths as though they are facts, and not hotly-debated opinions (or complete fabrications).
Neither the authors nor their peers contend that the new research ends the dispute, given the many remaining open questions. But taken together, the studies appear to push the research pendulum away from critics who have argued that the fixation with make-or-break exams undermines teachers, stifles analytical learning and squeezes out struggling students, all without providing any clear benefits.
"If I were gambling on whether to put in a high-stakes system or not, I would put one in," said Martin Carnoy, the Stanford University professor who co-wrote one of the studies. "There's some probability I would be wrong. But if I were to put my money on something right now, I would try this."
In his study, published next month in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal, Mr. Carnoy and a colleague, Susanna Loeb, examined whether states with serious test consequences did better on a nationwide math assessment than their counterparts bearing none at all. While there seemed to be little to no difference in the performance of white students, the study found that the more consequences a state imposed, the better its minority students typically did.
In fact, for every additional layer of sanction or reward placed on schools, teachers and children, about 3.5 percent more black students and 3 to 4 percent more Latinos grasped the basics of eighth-grade math. The same pattern did not prove true for Latinos in math in the lower grades, but for black students it did, leading Mr. Carnoy to speculate that the threat of consequences may compel schools to demand more from students whom they may have otherwise written off.
Hooo, that's interesting. That result definitely supports those educators and activists who argue against "the soft bigotry of low expectations" for minority students.
No less importantly, the study found that do-or-die exams did not lead to more dropouts, as other researchers have argued. Still, there was no evidence that they improved graduation rates. "If that's not the aim, what is all this about?" asked Mr. Carnoy, whose study was financed by the federal government. "Why do we care about raising test scores if more people aren't going to finish high school and go on to college?"
Good point. Evidence suggesting that high-stakes tests don't cause more students to drop out is an important point, though, since that's one claim made by many testing critics. Ultimately, though, we'd hope the tests would improve the graduation rates as well, which means there may be other factors affecting these rates that are too strong to be counter-balanced by testing.
The second piece of work cited in this article is the same Raymond & Hanushek study that I reviewed earlier this month.
The NYT does warn us that correlation isn't causation, and that we can't necessarily attribute these results to the test. However, these results are a strong rebuttal to those who claimed that high stakes would cause minority students to drop out more, or would cause students to actually learn less. Proving a causal link may indeed never be possible, but disproving a causal link - i.e., showing that we don't negatively affect learning by using high-stakes tests - is well within the realm of possibility.