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Arizona AIMS, Fires and Misses
Arizona should scrap plans to make AIMS a graduation requirement beginning in 2006.
That's one conclusion drawn easily from a report by the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University.
Another is that high-stakes testing has always been more about political sound and fury than learning.
The sound comes from states crowing about improved test scores, achieved after threatening "underperforming" schools with furious punishment if they didn't improve.
The crowing is a hollow sound, it turns out. You see, the improvements have occurred simply because schools "trained" their students rather than taught them.
That is to say, they drill them on what's in their particular test. But when you check to see if these high-stakes test takers can duplicate their performance on other measurements, the study found that scant learning occurred.
Researchers Audrey Amrein and David Berliner checked the results of states with high-stakes tests - including states that use them as graduation requirements - against National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), ACT, SAT and Advanced Placement scores.
The result: "There is inadequate evidence to support the proposition that high-stakes tests and high school graduation exams increase student achievement," the report finds. "The data presented in this study also suggest . . . that after the implementation of high school graduation exams, academic achievement apparently decreases."
Oh, great. Arizona students learning even less. No matter. We'll still have improved AIMS scores - once we force all those folks who don't test well to drop out or opt for GEDs.
OK, the solution is to simply compel schools to quit obsessing on the test.
Right. We've just put a scarlet U on "underperforming" schools and told them that they will be taken over if they don't improve. Teachers are even now being drilled on what to narrowly teach. The feds' No Child Left Behind policy threatens loss of funds.
Given these circumstances, suggesting that schools quit obsessing is about like saying pretty please while holding a gun to the victim's temple. A nicety only.
The study finds some common ground between the 27 states that have implemented high-stakes testing and the 18 with graduation-requirement tests.
They are more likely to spend less money per pupil than the national average.
They have high population growth. Many are in the South or Southwest.
They are states with high minority populations and with greater degrees of poverty.
So, what does this say? Simply that, frustrated by the difficulty in trying to stuff children with varying needs and backgrounds into one-size-fits-all educational cubbyholes, we've opted to "help" them by punishing them and their schools.
We do this because other fixes are far more expensive. These fixes might include smaller class sizes, better teacher training, more teacher pay and more specialized education to reach those in need.
And we do it also because we hate educators about as much as we hate the new taxes it would take to adequately fund education.
Oh, we say we love these teachers, but many of us really believe they are just a bunch of unionized whiners with pockets full of excuses. We believe their educations are all about fads and psychobabble and that they are ill-suited to do their jobs and all others. You know, those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. (And, yes, those who can't do either, write columns.)
It's just so much easier blaming educators than tackling the problems realistically.
Yes, some folks will say this study's conclusions were oh-so-predictable. After all, it comes from a university that, among other things, trains teachers. It was written and commissioned, the charges will go, by folks with a record of opposing high-stakes testing. In other words, attack the messengers.
Let me suggest, however, that it is simply counter-intuitive that any single test can be used to judge what a student knows. And if it can't be, why in the world would we use it as a graduation requirement? Moreover, make a person's job depend disproportionately on testing and it's equally clear that this person will stress teaching to the test to the exclusion of fuller learning.
Arizona should take stock. Does it want educated children or simply those who can survive AIMS in schools cowed into narrow teaching by so-called accountability?
There's a world of difference.
— Ricardo Pimentel
Arizona AIMS, fires and misses
Arizona Republic
Jan. 2, 2003
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/opinions/articles/0102pimentel02.html
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