Discrepencies Make Ranking More Difficult

Southwest Times Record

Monday, June 11, 2007

Those who trouble themselves with how well the public education process functions eventually consider how their school or district or state stacks up against those of other states.

Except that at least in some categories, education standards vary so much as to be not comparable. Case in point is an Associated Press story last week that said that a fourth-grader who was rated “proficient” in Mississippi would be listed as “failing” in Massachusetts .

These state tests are important because they are a determiner of how schools are complying with the federal No Child Left Behind law. But each state does its own education thing differently — some obviously better than others.

The report that turned up these disparities came from the Education Department, which compared what a student has to do to be rated as proficient in math and reading in elementary and middle schools around the country. The results showed that there was a big difference in where different states drew the line of what was acceptable and what wasn’t and that what was acceptable in most states was well below proficiency rates on national tests.

The reason, for example, that Massachusetts and Mississippi are so far apart is that Massachusetts sets its proficiency level just under that of the national test, but Mississippi does not. A fourth-grader in that southern state is labeled proficient (working at the level expected for that grade) even though his test score is a whopping 70 points lower.

It’s not difficult to understand why states, which select their own tests and decide what constitutes proficiency, set their marks lower rather than higher. If the cut-off is high, fewer students are able to achieve proficiency. When that happens, there can be tough sanctions against schools, including forced changes of teachers and principals — all triggered by the federal NCLB law.

State test scores are compared to the results of the National Assessment of Education Progress, which is a difficult test that covers several subjects. There aren’t any consequences for states that do poorly on that test, but educators are able to see how well their students performed compared to students from across the country.

The fix for this would be relative simple, but the reality is that it’s a sensitive subject with no easy solution. States were left to their own devices on picking tests and proficiency because they did not want Washington dictating such to them. Otherwise, NCLB would likely have never been passed in the first place.

That independent streak probably hasn’t changed, but Susan Fuhrman, president of Columbia University ’s Teachers College, said states should figure this out on their own.

“I think that in principle, it is a good idea,” she said, referring to having more uniform standards among states. “It is hard to argue why you have different math in Mississippi and Montana .” The states, she said, however, should get together on their own and work on the uniformity issue and not Washington.

Arkansas ’ proficiency, while not as aggressive as Massachusetts ’, is near the standards set by the national test. That is encouraging and shows the state has been enthusiastic about trying to meet tough education goals.

Just remember, though, the next time these “benchmark” numbers are released that a passing grade that many states give themselves may, in actuality, not be as good as the so-so grade we give ourselves.