The Chicago public schools are abandoning the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, or ITBS, in favor of a revised Illinois Standards Achievement Tests, or ISAT:
It's welcome news for both Chicago teachers and students who had to spend hours of preparation for the tests and lost precious class time for other lessons. Now, the public schools will be able to focus on one high-stakes test, the revamped Illinois Standards Achievement Tests, which has become an important measure of Chicago schools' performance under the No Child Left Behind law. "It's fabulous," Nobel School Principal Mirna Diaz Ortiz says. "I'm very happy that we're going to be measured by one test and not have to take two tests"...In addition to the ISAT, there will be another new test, but it will not put the same burden on students and teachers that the Iowa test did. It will not be used to determine promotion. The Stanford Learning First measures students' strengths and weaknesses in reading. It will provide a diagnostic tool for teachers to see where their students need help. It will be offered three times a year through 40- minute exams and will cover the same kind of material that is in the ISATs. It won't require extensive preparation.
The Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) measures individual student achievement relative to the Illinois Learning Standards. The ITBS, on the other hand, gives results in relation to an Iowa norm, or a national norm. This means that promotional judgments will be made for scores based on comparisons within Illinois, not for the nation as a whole. This sounds consistent with NCLB regulations.
Interactive ISAT samples can be found here. I'd like to be objective, but I note that the eighth-grade Reading sample is a reading passage written by James Thurber, one of my all-time favorite authors. I started reading him about that time, too. So I'm predisposed to like this exam.
This Chicago Tribune article has more info:
The Iowas, used in Chicago since 1972, will be replaced with three short reading assessments that officials believe will prove more valuable in gauging the progress of individual students. Called Stanford Learning First, the new 40-minute exams will be given in October, January and May and will test the same kind of material covered by the new ISATs...Officials said they still expect to use the historic data as a basis for comparison by creating a new formula that can equate the results of the old Iowas with the new Stanfords.
This can work, if the new Stanford exams have the same content as the old Iowa exams. Seems like this is a new, low-stakes way to test reading, with the scores being equated back to the high-stakes ITBS.
The test change also will trigger changes in the district's controversial retention policy, the details of which will be announced in October. The get-tough retention policy was created in 1997 when Daley declared an end to social promotion and started requiring students to meet minimum test standards in reading and math.The policy has been softened over the years. Now the district only considers reading scores and bars schools from retaining students twice in the same grade regardless of how low they score on the tests. Last year, about a third of the 24,000 students required to attend summer school because of low Iowa scores had to repeat a grade.
The article also mentions that the ISAT-based promotion decisions will be based on the ISAT portion that is scored in comparison to national norms. Interesting.
If any of you have experience with the ISATs, or have information that hasn't made it into the Chicago papers, let me know.
Posted by kswygert at August 23, 2005 12:34 PM