Devoted Reader Lori M sent a provocative column my way:
Tens of thousands of parents of schoolchildren and hundreds of thousands of other taxpayers learned from media reports last week that "the majority of Texas school districts and campuses in 2005 earned the rating of 'Academically Acceptable.'" Most of the moms, dads and school-tax payers breathed a sigh of relief and shrugged off the "bad" news that a small percentage of districts and campuses "received the lowest rating of 'Academically Unacceptable'"...To "earn" a rating of "Academically Acceptable" on the 2005 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test, the students in a school district or at an individual campus had to achieve ...
In reading and English language arts, a passing rate of 50 percent.
In writing ... 50 percent.
In social studies ... 50 percent.
In math ... 35 percent.
In science ... 25 percent.In case the educational horror of those numbers didn't sink in ...
If half of the youngsters in a district or on a campus failed tests in reading, writing and social studies ... and 65 percent failed arithmetic ... and 75 percent failed science — the Texas education establishment deemed that district/campus "Academically Acceptable"!
Lori comments: "I guess I'm part of that old-fashioned school of thought that believes that a passing grade consisted of mastering the majority (at least 65%) of the material. Looks like it's sufficient to learn 25-50%!"
What's happening here? A disconnect between how we, the educational consumers, think of "passing," and how Texas is ranking schools, which is with a minimum-competency standard. "Acceptable" here is not defined in the same way that we'd consider "acceptable" to be in an academic course.
The author isn't exaggerating when he quotes the low percentages above; those come straight out of the state's 2005 Accountability Manual. You can skip right to this table for the good stuff. Yes, it's true that this year, a school for which 26% of the students meet the standard in Science is acceptable in that content area. This is also the first year the Science standard was set at what the advisory panel actually recommended, as opposed to one (2004) or two (2003) SEMs beow it.
To interpret these numbers, you really have to have some idea of what the standards are, so that you know if a school in which only 26% meet those standards is a travesty, or just plain mediocre. You also have to realize that while the state set those standards very low, that doesn't necessarily mean most schools are squeaking in just over the bar. The 10th grade Science results, for instance, show that 54% of the overall student body in Texas met the standard. The raw score conversion table for that exam shows that a raw score of 34 out of 55 converts to the lowest possible passing score, and according to this document, that means a student would have to answer 62% of the items correctly to meet the standard. That's pretty much in line with what most people think of as a passing score.
I don't mean to suggest that parents don't have a right to wonder why the standards for Acceptable schools aren't set higher. And, given that we don't know how difficult the science items are, for example, we don't know how meaningful that 62%-correct standard is. But it might help in this debate to be sure to separate the standard for the exam from the standard for the schools.
Posted by kswygert at August 9, 2005 05:35 PM