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Students will get high school diplomas only if they pass state tests, says board
Kudos to the 23 states that have not jumped on this corporate-politico bandwagon. As the economy worsens, there will be even greater pressure to blame it on schoolteachers.
by Betsy Hammond
SALEM -- Beginning with next year's high school freshmen, Oregon plans to require students to pass state reading, writing and math tests to get a high school diploma.
That would make Oregon the 27th state to require students to prove their abilities on standardized tests to graduate. Nearly three-fourths of the nation's high schoolers already face state graduation exams.
The Oregon Board of Education endorsed details of the new diploma requirement Friday. The idea is to guarantee that every student who graduates from an Oregon public school has the "essential skills" to succeed in college or a career, says state school board member Duncan Wyse, president of the Oregon Business Council.
But it raises the possibility that thousands of Oregon students who have passed all the required courses in high school would be denied diplomas because they can't prove their skills at reading, writing or math.
Oregon plans to require students to meet 10th-grade benchmarks on three long-standing state tests -- a multiple-choice reading test, a multiple-choice math test and an essay to measure writing skills -- to earn a diploma starting in 2012.
That looks daunting, considering about one-third of Oregon sophomores now fail the reading exam and almost half fail in math.
But experts say that when students know that their diploma hinges on passing the exam, they try harder and passing rates rise. Middle schools and high schools also do more to prepare students who are weak in any of the tested subjects with extra classes and tutoring.
Many states that have instituted a mandatory graduation test were hit with lawsuits on behalf of students who were denied diplomas. States have generally won by proving students were given a fair shot at learning the necessarily skills.
The move comes a year after the Legislature voted to end the state's controversial Certificate of Initial Mastery, or CIM, a badge of academic proficiency that was optional for students. In some ways, the board's decision Friday revives that certificate by giving the tests even more importance than the CIM did.
The Oregon Board of Education voted 15 months ago to create more rigorous diploma requirements, but the panel struggled for more than a year to define those skills and how they would be measured. With input from educators and others, the board finally settled on the same state tests they have given for years as the primary way for students to prove their prowess.
A survey completed by 350 teachers, principals, parents and others this month showed that 71 percent of them endorsed using the state tests as a way to have students qualify for a diploma.
Oregon is taking a different approach from all but one other state, according to Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington, D.C., think tank that has studied graduation tests for years.
At the insistence of the state school board, Oregon plans to allow school districts to come up with a way for students who fail the exams to be deemed proficient by their own teachers.
The school district would have to convince a state panel that it has a local test or a performance task that measures the same level of reading, writing or math skill as the state exam. Once the state approves that test or assignment, teachers at the student's school would decide whether the student deserves a diploma.
Oregon officials acknowledge that could lead to controversy. Most states that allow students to substitute a performance task or portfolio of work for a passing grade on the state exam require the state education department or another outside official to judge the quality of the work.
In New Jersey, the only state with a mandatory graduation test that allows a locally graded assignment to substitute for a passing score on the tests, the local alternative set off a controversy and school districts' latitude is now being reined in.
Critics there called the local substitute a "backdoor diploma" that lowered the standards, particularly for minority students and those learning English as a second language. In a few high-poverty, high-minority districts, more than half of the students got their diplomas that way.
To keep Oregon's standards uniformly high, the state education department probably will develop a monitoring system to make sure no district grades its own students too easily, said Deputy Superintendent Ed Dennis.
The board plans to make the new diploma rule official in June, after a May 28 public hearing in Salem.
Doug Kosty, associate superintendent over testing, says he expects a big turnout at the hearing and expects public criticism to lead to some changes in the final rule.
In addition to passing three standardized tests or their equivalent, students would have to prove their skills at public speaking and doing in-depth applied math problems. But those two skills would only be judged by the student's teachers, using a state-developed grading scale, not by a state test.
California, which began requiring seniors to pass a graduation test in 2006, denied diplomas to 7 percent of seniors -- or nearly 30,000 students -- last year because they could not pass the test despite repeated attempts and offers of free tutoring.
This year, for the first time, Washington is requiring students to pass state reading and writing exams to get a diploma. Heading into their final test opportunity this spring, about 15 percent of the state's seniors still needed to pass one or both exams to get a diploma.
In Oregon, the teachers union does not object to the new graduation requirements -- as long as schools get enough resources to provide after-school tutoring, summer school and other extra support to struggling students, says Courtney Vanderstek of the Oregon Education Association.
The reading, writing and math tests are familiar to Oregon teachers and Oregon educators generally do a great job of getting most students to reach those standards, she said.
"The idea here is proficiency and helping every (student) succeed. It's not seeing how many people we can fail," Vanderstek said. "We can do this if we put in place the supports and resources to help get every student there."
— Betsy Hammond
The Oregonian
2008-04-19
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