9486 in the collection
State Should Let Students Rise to the Challenge
If the state Board of Education backs up any more, it's going to fall off a cliff.
The latest news is that the state won't require students to pass all the High School Assessments to graduate. If they fail one of the tests, they still can get a diploma as long as they don't fail it too badly and then do well enough on the other exams to earn a combined passing score.
Let's review where we were heading and where we are.
Way back when Maryland's school reform effort began in the 1980s, the talk was that a diploma would be a ticket to a four-year college -- not a community college remedial class. The hope and promise was that no one would graduate who was not ready for college.
(By the way, this was long before the federal No Child Left Behind law and its testing requirements. No Child Left Behind is often blamed for high school graduation tests, but it is individual states that have decided to link graduation to tests, not the federal government.)
For years, Maryland was lauded throughout the country for its ambitious standards and rigorous testing program.
There was even a period in the 1990s when Maryland's university system considered hooking its admissions standards to the state's high school graduation standards. Admissions officials would simply look at how students did on the High School Assessments and be able to decide whether to admit them to College Park or one of the other U-Md. campuses. They would not even need to see SAT scores.
But after the state decided it was not going to require students to know any Algebra II before graduation, the university system washed its hands of the mess. Algebra II is what the university system says is required to be ready for college, and the state had no interest in requiring Algebra II before graduation. In fact, as it turned out, the algebra/data analysis High School Assessment test barely requires knowing any Algebra I. It's more a pre-algebra, or "algebra concepts," kind of test.
Even with all the downsizing of their requirements, though, state school board members are so terrified of the idea of half of the state's students not being able to pass the High School Assessments that they have pushed back the time when the tests will count for graduation several times. Right now, the idea is that today's seventh-graders will have to pass the assessments before graduating in 2009, but there's no assurance the state board won't delay even further.
And last week, the state board decided that students don't even have to pass all the tests -- they just have to accumulate enough test points to sort of look as if they might be able to pass at some point in their lives.
These school board members are people who clearly don't have a lot of confidence in the ability of our students to meet any kind of intellectual standards.
Not that they don't have reason to be worried. More than one-quarter of the state's college students need remedial classes, according to the Maryland Higher Education Commission. More than half of Maryland's high school students failed at least one test on the High School Assessments last year.
But there's good evidence that if you set high standards and give students good instruction, they will rise to the challenge.
Take Massachusetts. Massachusetts instituted some pretty difficult tests and required its students to pass them to graduate. The first time the graduating class of 2003 took the tests, when they were in 10th grade, 77 percent of the white students passed, but only 29 percent of the Latino students and 37 percent of the black students passed. But the state stuck to its guns. Last year, the last time these students took the tests, 83 percent of the Latino students, 86 percent of the black students and 97 percent of the white students passed.
The same kind of narrowing of the gap occurred for Massachusetts students with special needs. The first time they took the test, 77 percent of the students in regular education passed, compared with 7 percent of the students with limited English skills and 30 percent of the students with disabilities. Those are scary numbers, and probably what Maryland is facing as well.
But by the final test administration, 97 percent of the students in regular education had passed, and 82 percent of those with limited English proficiency and 80 percent of the students with disabilities passed.
I predict the pass rates will be better this year than last -- and all the students will know they accomplished something worthwhile.
But Maryland seems uninspired by Massachusetts.
"This is definitely the state with the longest timeline," said Kati Haycock of the Education Trust in describing Maryland. Education Trust is an organization that advocates that all students, particularly poor students and students of color, have access to a high standards and a rich curriculum.
Haycock is adamant that all students should graduate from high school prepared for college. Of the Maryland standards, she said that "even if the students get to these standards, they're still not ready for college."
To some extent, it is up to Prince George's County to persuade the state that it can have high standards and expect students to meet them. State board members are concerned about how poorly Prince George's students have done on standardized tests, compared with peers in other counties, and that is part of what is leading them to lower the standards.
If students in Prince George's make progress this year on the High School Assessments, maybe the state board will realize that progress is possible.
— Karin Chenoweth
State Should Let Students Rise to the Challenge
Washington Post
2004-03-04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27123-2004Mar3?language=printer
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
