Indiana has a mandatory exit exam, and a panel recently voted to up the standard for passing - apparently for the sole purpose of keeping the percentage of students passing the same from year to year:
An advisory panel voted Tuesday to recommend that the state raise the score required to pass Indiana's mandatory graduation exam...Officials expect about 32 percent to fail the English portion of the test. About 36 percent are expected to fail the math portion, which included algebra for the first time last fall.
The state agency adjusted the pass-fail scores recommended by a panel of teachers to achieve those percentages, which are about the same as last year's failure rate, said Wes Bruce, who heads student assessment at the Indiana Department of Education.
You don't see many attempts at norm-referencing in exit exams, for the simple reason that an exit exam should represent material mastered, not location on the curve. There's no reason why 100% of students can't pass a high school exit exam, and no reason why 32% failing should be a number that Indiana hopes to see year-to-year. I think this is an attempt at equating the exam across years, but it's not a useful attempt.
The percentage of students who pass or fail is a more important number than the score, an expert said. "With all the games we play, we're just deciding the percentage of kids that are going to fail," said Lowell Rose, a former Kokomo school superintendent and consultant with the Indiana Urban Schools Association.
I have no idea what that quote is supposed to tell us. Yes, percent failing is important, but there's no reason to tweak standards to keep that constant year-to-year.
Raising the passing score on the GQE is the latest move to make the earning of a high school diploma more demanding. The panel in October unanimously approved a plan that by 2011 would make college aid and admissions contingent on students earning a Core 40 diploma — a much more stringent academic path.
That, I have no quarrel with.
Education officials say such measures are necessary to ensure that Hoosiers have the skills needed to get into college and get good jobs. Critics say the tougher standards will make it impossible for some students to graduate regardless of their college plans and doom their chances of making a decent living.
Do the critics stop to think that students who don't master high-school-level material (and the stuff on exit exams tends to be VERY easy) won't have many college plans, or much hope for a decent income? That it's not the test that will hold students back, but their educational deficits?
That much said, the test should only be made more difficult if the curriculum is well-aligned to it. Increasing the difficulty of test items while not focusing on the teaching of those items in school would miss the point entirely, which is to intensify the curriculum, not the items.
The GQE is the cap of a series of annual standardized tests Indiana students must take beginning in third grade. Sophomores who do not pass both sections on the first try are given four more chances to pass before they finish high school. Students also can apply for waivers to graduate despite failing the exam, and people who do not pass the test can retake it after they leave high school, though they might have to take remedial classes at their own expense or take free televised courses.
Remember what I said about how easy exit exams are?
Posted by kswygert at January 19, 2005 07:21 PM