Nebraska's state report card uses "Adequate Yearly Progress", or AYP, to judge how well schools are doing. However, only in Nebraska are schools allowed to create their own assessments for this type of monitoring; only the writing portion of the tests are the same across schools. Does this means it's impossible to actually compare Nebraskan schools to one another?
When Nebraska's State Report Card is released on Monday, most of the attention will likely focus on which schools made "adequate yearly progress" and which did not....Superintendent Steve Joel has been warning for weeks that the news for the Grand Island school district will not be all good when AYP results are released on Monday...
When it comes to measuring adequate yearly progress, the state of Nebraska is unique among the 50 states. The other 49 states use a common -- that is, the same -- test for all students being assessed in the various subject areas.
But in Nebraska, the writing assessment is the only one that is common to all students in the state. In Nebraska, each school district in the state is allowed to develop its own assessment of how well its students are performing in the different subject areas.
[Sssistant superintendent for curriculum Steve] Burkholder said some educators might argue that that means that it is impossible to compare Nebraska schools when it comes to assessment results.
However, he noted that most people will inevitably compare results...He also said that Nebraska Department of Education officials believe that the results between schools are at least roughly comparable because each school district is supposed to use the same set of criteria when developing their assessments.
If the purpose is to compare schools, though, why allow each school to develop its own assessment? Schools that have not developed assessments, in fact, use the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills), and this may be part of why some are not yet making AYP; the ITBS may be more difficult than Nebraska's state standards require.
I also think it's naive to assume that anyone can create a good test as long as the standards are clearly defined. Having good standards is necessary but not sufficient to have a test which measure those (and only those) standards in a reliable and valid method.
Posted by kswygert at December 1, 2003 12:20 PM