Trevor Bothwell of the Conservative Voice approves of senator Thayer Vershschoor's (R-AZ) recent crusade to dismantle Arizona's AIMS, but heartily disagrees with his reasons for doing so:
Arizona state senator Thayer Verschoor emerged as an unlikely hero to many Arizona high schoolers this week, announcing his intention to dismantle the state’s AIMS test, an accountability measure that essentially acts as an exit exam for potential graduates...According to The Arizona Republic, Sen. Verschoor believes that graduation requirements “should be a local control issue,” stating, “This should not be mandated by big government and a state school board. To me, we are saying that we don't trust our teachers."
Sen. Verschoor is correct, inasmuch as our responsibility for providing public education should not fall under the auspices of the federal government...But the senator’s claim that administering high school exit exams implies that we don’t trust our teachers misses the point. Tests such as the AIMS exam are implemented by many states precisely because we often cannot trust many of our public school teachers and administrators, who have methodically dumbed down academic standards over the past few decades through their condemnation of fact-based instructional methods and student discipline.
Indeed. It's silly to see anyone outside the field of education suggesting, with a straight face, that assessment means we don't "trust" teachers to do their jobs. Does this mean that any college that requires entrance exams doesn't "trust" their applicants to represent themselves fairly on their application forms? Or does it just mean that in college admissions, as in just about every other part of real life, assessment is par for the course, and if you're good, you should be able to demonstrate that? Funny how educators keep assuming that what they do cannot possibly be measured, and in fact, shouldn't be measured.
Bothwell doesn't mince words at the end of the article:
...most importantly, our schools can’t continue to neglect to teach kids rote skills such as spelling, writing, multiplication and division tables, and geography in the early grades, and then expect them to pass an exit exam in high school that likely tests such cumulative competence. Parents and educrats in Arizona are rallying around Sen. Verschoor because he too believes the AIMS test to be unfair. But it isn’t so much the exam itself that is unfair as it is the poor preparation many of these students have received from the beginning of elementary school.
The AIMS has been under attack for quite some time. Back in 2002, ASU researchers concluded that the AIMS math portion was too difficult, and was seemingly measuring college-entry-level skills as opposed to exit-exam-level skills. Even if that were so, it's hard to understand why a 97% failure rate for non-white, non-Asian examinees is supposed to be an indictment of only the exam. Do the researchers think it's reasonable that only 3% of these youths are prepared for college? (And some of you might remember that ASU seems to have a track record of anti-testing publications).
Now, some op-eds are clamoring to "fix" the exam, while other pontificators insist that the AIMS is a good idea carried "too far:"
The district reported that 75 percent of juniors passed the writing portion of the test, 59 percent passed the reading part of the test and a mere 36 percent passed the math section.
These juniors will be the seniors who must pass AIMS or not graduate next year....But it is very likely some seniors — the number of them is the only debatable issue at this point — will not get diplomas after four years of schooling because they were unable to pass one test.
All of this kerfuffle is revolving around the idea of whether or not the test is fair, and as usual, most everyone is talking past one another. In any discussion of this, answers to the following questions are crucial:
1. What should the AIMS measure?
2. If the AIMS actually does measure college-entry-level math skills, as some claim, is that what the state of Arizona wants? And if not, why not?
3. Are students being taught AIMS material in classrooms? Is the high failure rate because there's a mismatch between test content and curriculum content? If so, why is that happening?
I'm sure I could think or more, but these are the basics that have to be clarified. Without them, we'll either see lots of AZ students flunking the exam and being held back - or NOT being held back and subsequently finding out that their math skills aren't worth a damn in academia or the real world.
Posted by kswygert at January 8, 2005 10:13 PM