What's going on with test scores in Delaware? And where's Dave Huber on this?
Buoyed last month by an apparent bounce in the state's standardized test scores, elected officials rushed to put themselves in the way of reflected glory...
But what looked like rising test scores could be, in part, a fluke, a one-time bounce that next year could burst like a bubble and this year could be obscuring academic decline in some student groups. The inflation may be related to a state law that took effect two years ago to hold back students with low test scores, meaning this year's testing pool may have contained more higher-achieving students than in past years.
Nonetheless, both Minner and Education Secretary Valerie Woodruff said the improvement in test results is genuine.
The rest of the article, which is long but worth reading, goes on to explain that when the repeaters eventually reach the 10th-grade exam (next year), the scores will most likely drop down a bit. It's true that it's hard to disentangle the real progress from the examinee pool anomalies in Delaware's startling test score improvements (53 percent met the math standard, compared with last year's 45 percent; 71 percent met the reading standard, compared with 66 percent last year). The retention rate for eighth-graders in 2002 was 11.5 percent (as compared to 3.8 percent in 200), so that's a sizeable little chunk that didn't take the 10th-grade exams this year.
Of course, if retaining those kids did in fact help them to be better prepared for when they do take the test (results so far suggest otherwise), the test scores won't drop as much. So I think next year's scores are going to be very informative.
Me, I'm just savoring the opportunity to read a news article in which it is assumed that a state's standardized exam scores are accurate indicators of true student ability (we're seeing high scores because the examinees are smarter, for whatever reason). Funny, but don't we almost always read the opposite - tests are biased, educators shouldn't assume that student ability is being accurately portrayed - when low test scores are observed? Why isn't this reporter rushing to remind us that "critics say" such tests are biased? Most times, we see quote after quote in articles trying to convince us that the tests are meaningless and that students are really doing much better than scores would suggest; here, we're being cautioned to think that students are actually doing worse than scores would suggest.
This reminds me of a time-honored technique of testing critics, in which they damn all tests as biased and unfair - unless those tests support a political point they want to make. Witness the groups who claim SAT scores are biased, but then use SAT scores to make a point about a different test.
Posted by kswygert at July 8, 2004 03:51 PM