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Louisiana Parish Considering Further Undermining of Teacher Authority

Ohanian Comment: What Louisiana is considering is to further undermine teacher professionalism by saying outside commercial testers know more about kids than do teachers.

Saying they want to push students to give their all on standardized tests, Jefferson Parish public school officials are proposing a new twist: factoring the results into fourth-quarter report card grades.

If approved, the plan apparently would make Jefferson one of few parishes in the state to incorporate standardized test scores into letter grades, officials said.

The idea the School Board could consider today would use the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program test in eighth grade and Iowa tests in sixth and seventh grades to determine 25 percent of students' final report card markings.

The LEAP already can hold back students if they fail the test. Both tests are included in state-issued ratings used to reward schools that improve or reform ones that decline.

Richard Carpenter, director of secondary education for Jefferson schools, said he noticed a need for a policy tying the tests to grades a few years ago, when he was principal of Marrero Middle School.

"At one point when I was principal, a student asked a question, 'Do these tests count in our report cards?' " said Carpenter, who is promoting the plan. "That student's question sparked my interest in this. That told me if it counted, it mattered to the kid."

Twenty out of 23 principals who responded to a survey by school system administrators said they support the plan. After this coming school year, the practice could advance to include ninth grade and then a higher grade each year until all high school students are included.

The move adds to an extensive testing system that parent Jessica Campbell, incoming president of the East Bank Parents Advisory Council, called an inevitability in education nationwide.

"There's part of me that says it is too much testing," Campbell said. "It places too much emphasis on how a child does on any given day. But at the same time, you have to have something. It's here. It's a fact of life. We can't get away from it."

Leslie Jacobs, a designer of the state-mandated testing program and a member of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, said Jefferson Parish's approach could be a good way to motivate students.

On the Iowa tests, which compare students with a national sample, the plan could address concerns that students see few consequences of the test and therefore don't try hard enough, Jacobs said.

On the LEAP test, which gauges how well students have mastered the state's curriculum, the considerable incentive of passing to be promoted already exists. But a model such as Jefferson's could encourage students to achieve scores beyond merely passing, she said.

Jacobs said the plan doesn't go too far in emphasizing test scores because they would affect only one-fourth of the final quarter's grades.

According to an informal check of other school systems, at least one other parish, Livingston, already uses standardized test scores in calculating grades, said Pam Pritchard, Jefferson Parish's testing and accountability specialist.

By motivating students to take the Iowa tests seriously, the approach could produce a more accurate measure of students' needs that educators use in LEAP preparations, said Carol Ritz, principal of Riverdale Middle School and a backer of the idea.

Ritz also said it could soften the pass-or-else reality for the eighth-graders taking the LEAP test by getting them used to tests with consequences during the years when they take the Iowa tests, in fifth, sixth and seventh grades.

"I think it's shocking that at these points in their careers, they are suddenly faced with these high-stakes tests," Ritz said. "If we're going to have so much emphasis on testing, we need to have every tool."

The plan calls for assigning a letter grade to each of the five achievement levels on the LEAP, with an "unsatisfactory" earning an F and an "advanced" earning an A. On the Iowa, grades would be assigned based on students' percentile ranks ranging from 1 to 99. A score of 75 percent to 99 percent on the Iowa would equal an A, for example. A 1 percent to 15 percent would be an F.





— Mark Waller
LEAP may land role on report cards
Times-Picayune
2003-08-06
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/eastjefferson/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1060151207108070.xml

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