The Impact of High-Stakes Tests on Student Academic Performance: An analysis of NAEP results in States with high-stakes tests and ACT, SZAT, and AP Test results in States with high school graduation exams.

By Audrey L. Amrein and David C. Berliner

http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/documents/EPSL-0211-126-EPRU.pdf

This study examines 27 states that have incorporated high-stakes testing policies into their 1-8 grade curriculum. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores are used to examine whether academic achievement increases after high-stakes tests were attached to tests in grades 1 – 8. If academic achievement did not change after stakes were attached to a state test or if achievement decreased, the effectiveness of the high stakes policy as a means of improving student performance must be called into question. The second objective of the study is to assess whether academic achievement has improved after the introduction of high school graduation exams that tests a high school student’s level of knowledge in core high school subjects. This analysis involved 18 states, and proposes that if academic achievement did not change after the implementation of a high school graduation exam, the effectiveness of the high school graduation policy as a means of improving student performance should be called into question.

Results are presented for all exams in each state that incorporates high-stakes testing policy, and are also summarized. Analysis of scores and participation rates for the NAEP, ACT, SAT, and AP tests suggest that there is inadequate evidence to support the proposition that high-stakes tests and high school graduation exams increase student achievement. The data presented also suggest that after implementation of high school graduation exams, academic achievement apparently decreases. After high school graduation exams were implemented, achievement as indicated by ACT, SAT, and AP scores declined, suggesting that high stakes tests and high school graduation exams may tend to inhibit the academic achievement of students, not foster their academic growth.

The Harmful Impact of the TAAS System of Testing in Texas: Beneath the accountability rhetoric

By Linda McNeil and Angela Valenzuela

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~ctreduc/TAASArticle.pdf

The authors present findings of the direct, negative, educational consequences of high stakes testing in Texas and its harmful effects on the quality of education available to disadvantaged Latino and African American children. Under the TAAS system of testing, curriculum, instruction, school resources, and children all adversely affected. The authors' overall conclusion was that "TAAS masks the real problems of inequity that underlie the failure to adequately educate children. By shifting funds, public attention and scarce organizational and budgetary resources away from schools and into the coffers of the testing industry vendors, the futures of poor and minority children and the schools they attend get compromised."

Early Childhood Assessment

Jessica McMaken

The Bush administration wants Head Start to use standardized skill assessments similar to those for K-12 school -- but Head Start officials and many early childhood experts say it is difficult to assess very young children accurately enough to make high-stakes decisions about programs. Before changing policies, the Education Commission of the States recommends that policymakers consider whether the assessment is designed to evaluate program quality and measure outcomes consistent with the program's goals. Have measures been thoroughly evaluated by reputable test developers? Will those administering tests be properly trained? And finally, are there other ways to evaluate program quality that may be just as effective?

http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/43/19/4319.doc

Standards and Assessments: Where we are and what we need

By Linda Darling-Hammond

http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=11109

Darling-Hammond presents several well researched areas concerning assessment and school districts that use high stakes testing as the primary assessment policy. In these states, disproportionate numbers of minority, low-income, and special needs students have failed tests for promotion and graduation, leading to grade retention, failure to graduate, and sanctions for schools, without efforts to ensure equal and adequate teaching, texts, curriculum, or educational resources. Incentive systems that reward or sanction schools based on average student scores appear to create incentives for pushing low-scorers into education, retaining them from being promoted, and encouraging them to drop out so that schools’ average schools look better. Evidence of rising dropout rates in Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas has been tied to the effects of grade retention, student discouragement, and school exclusion and transfer policies stimulated by high stakes tests. Darling-Hammond discusses different strategies in which mid-course corrections are needed if standards and assessments are to support improved education rather than greater inequality. These include quality and alignment of standards, appropriate use of assessments, and the development of systems that assure equal and adequate opportunity to learn. She closes the article with a case example that describes Connecticut’s exemplary program where state level policy makers have used a standards-based starting point to upgrade teachers’ knowledge and skills as a means of improving student learning. In 1998, Connecticut’s 4th grade students ranked first in the nation in reading and mathematics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), despite increased student poverty and language diversity in the states’ public school during that decade. Connecticut’s preparation, licensing, and mentoring requirements – which are tightly connect to its student standards – ensures that all entering teachers have strong content and pedagogical knowledge to enable them to teach a wide range of diverse learners well – including those that have special education needs and those who are English language learners. Rather than pursue a punitive approach that creates dysfunctional responses without generating learning, Connecticut has made ongoing investments in improving teaching and schooling through high standards and high supports.

The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education

By Walt Haney

http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/

Abstract: The article summarizes the recent history of education reform and statewide testing in Texas, which led to introduction of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) in 1990-91. A variety of evidence in the late 1990s led a number of observers to conclude that the state of Texas had made near miraculous progress in reducing dropouts and increasing achievement. The passing scores on TAAS tests were arbitrary and discriminatory. Analyses comparing TAAS reading, writing and math scores with one another and with relevant high school grades raise doubts about the reliability and validity of TAAS scores. The article discusses problems of missing students and other mirages in Texas enrollment statistics that profoundly affect both reported dropout statistics and test scores. Only 50% of minority students in Texas have been progressing from grade 9 to high school graduation since the initiation of the TAAS testing program. Since about 1982, the rates at which Black and Hispanic students are required to repeat grade 9 have climbed steadily, such that by the late 1990s, nearly 30% of Black and Hispanic students were "failing" grade 9. Cumulative rates of grade retention in Texas are almost twice as high for Black and Hispanic students as for White students. Some portion of the gains in grade 10 TAAS pass rates are illusory. The numbers of students taking the grade 10 tests who were classified as "in special education" and hence not counted in schools' accountability ratings nearly doubled between 1994 and 1998. A substantial portion of the apparent increases in TAAS pass rates in the 1990s are due to such exclusions. In the opinion of educators in Texas, schools are devoting a huge amount of time and energy preparing students specifically for TAAS, and emphasis on TAAS is hurting more than helping teaching and learning in Texas schools, particularly with at-risk students, and TAAS contributes to retention in grade and dropping out. Five different sources of evidence about rates of high school completion in Texas are compared and contrasted. The review of GED statistics indicated that there was a sharp upturn in numbers of young people taking the GED tests in Texas in the mid-1990s to avoid TAAS. A convergence of evidence indicates that during the 1990s, slightly less than 70% of students in Texas actually graduated from high school. Between 1994 and 1997, TAAS results showed a 20% increase in the percentage of students passing all three exit level TAAS tests (reading, writing and math), but TASP (a college readiness test) results showed a sharp decrease (from 65.2% to 43.3%) in the percentage of students passing all three parts (reading, math, and writing). As measured by performance on the SAT, the academic learning of secondary school students in Texas has not improved since the early 1990s, compared with SAT takers nationally. SAT-Math scores have deteriorated relative to students nationally. The gains on NAEP for Texas fail to confirm the dramatic gains apparent on TAAS. The gains on TAAS and the unbelievable decreases in dropouts during the 1990s are more illusory than real. The Texas "miracle" is more hat than cattle.

What Tests Can and Cannot Tell Us

By Nancy Kober

http://ericcass.uncg.edu/virtuallib/assess/1009.html

Abstract:

Annual changes in average test scores for a subgroup, grade, or school can be an undependable gauge of the teaching and learning in that school. An annual rise in average test scores doesn’t necessarily mean a school is succeeding, just as a drop in scores doesn’t always mean it’ failing. This natural volatility of average scores will make it difficult for schools to post the consistent test score gains demanded by the No Child Left Behind Act. If this score instability results in large numbers of schools being misidentified as low-performing, it could put pressure on states to make their tests easier, lower their cutoff scores, or weaken their standards — the opposite of what the law intends. It could also damage public support for state testing programs.

High Stakes Testing and High School Completion

By Clarke, Marguerite; Haney, Walter; Madaus, George

http://www.bc.edu/research/nbetpp/publications/v1n3.html

Abstract:

This report examines how high stakes assessments affect dropout and high school completion rates. The focus is on five suggestive lines of evidence about this relationship. This evidence is drawn in part from studies done at Boston College or by researchers for the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy. The conclusion drawn is that high stakes testing programs are linked to decreased rates of high school completion. The evidence is mainly correlational, but it is suggestive enough to warrant further research to clarify the role of high stakes testing in decisions to drop out of school. The first evidence is from the era of minimum competency testing (MCT). There was no MCT in half of the 10 states with the lowest dropout rates, and the states with the highest dropout rates had MCT programs with standards set at least in part by the state. A second piece of evidence shows that in schools with proportionately more students of low socioeconomic status that used high stakes minimum competency tests, early dropout rates, between 8th and 10th grades, were 4 to 6 percentage points higher than in schools that were similar except for the high stakes test requirement. The third piece of evidence comes from high school graduation testing and dropouts in Florida. A more complex relationship is suggested by the fact that only for students with moderately good grades was a significant increase in dropping out associated with failure of the high school graduation test. A fourth line of evidence comes from the evolution of high stakes testing in Texas, where findings suggest that some high school sophomores dropped out of school because of the requirement of satisfactory performance on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. A final point is the relationship among high stakes testing, grade retention, and dropout rates. Research has generally suggested that grade retention makes students more likely to drop out. Interaction with graduation test requirements may result in increased numbers of dropouts.

AERA Position Statement Concerning High-Stakes Testing in PreK-12 Education

http://www.aera.net/about/policy/stakes.htm

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the nation's largest professional organization devoted to the scientific study of education. The AERA seeks to promote educational policies and practices that credible scientific research has shown to be beneficial, and to discourage those found to have negative effects. From time to time, the AERA issues statements setting forth its research-based position on educational issues of public concern. One such current issue is the increasing use of high-stakes tests as instruments of educational policy.

This position statement on high-stakes testing is based on the 1999 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. The Standards represent a professional consensus concerning sound and appropriate test use in education and psychology. They are sponsored and endorsed by the AERA together with the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). This statement is intended as a guide and a caution to policy makers, testing professionals, and test users involved in high-stakes testing programs. However, the Standards remain the most comprehensive and authoritative statement by the AERA concerning appropriate test use and interpretation.

Testing: The Needs and the Dangers

The Harvard Civil Rights Project

http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/resources/civilrights_brief/testing.php

The article outlines the nature of high-stakes testing in several states, including civil rights concerns, research findings, and suggestions regarding action that those concerned can take with regard to changing policy in implementation of high-stakes testing.

Assessments and Accountability

by Robert L. Linn

http://www.aera.net/pubs/er/arts/29-02/linn01.htm

Use of tests and assessments as key elements in five waves of educational reform during the past 50 years are reviewed. These waves include the role of tests in tracking and selection emphasized in the 1950s, the use of tests for program accountability in the 1960s, minimum competency testing programs of the 1970s, school and district accountability of the 1980s, and the standards-based accountability systems of the 1990s. Questions regarding the impact, validity, and generalizability of reported gains, and the credibility of results in high-stakes accountability uses are discussed. Emphasis is given to three issues regarding currently popular accountability systems. These are (a) the role of content standards, (b) the dual goals of high performance standards and common standards for all students, and (c) the validity of accountability models. Some suggestions for dealing with the most severe limitations of accountability are provided.

Building Tests To Support Instruction and Accountability: A Guide for Policymakers

By:

American Association of School Administrators

National Association of Elementary School Principals

National Association of Secondary School Principals

National Education Association

National Middle School Association

http://www.mgforum.org/highstakes/Building_Tests.pdf

State-mandated accountability tests must be useful to educators concerned about improving the instruction of children. The Commission on Instructionally Supportive Assessment, in support of this assertion, presents nine requirements for a new generation of statewide achievement tests. The Commission believes that tests written to these requirements will benefit students by providing educators with information they can use to improve the quality of instruction. At the same time, the tests will provide states with information to hold educators, schools, and school districts accountable for student performance.

Clearly, state policymakers who pass accountability legislation have in mind this dual outcome of assessing and improving student performance. But, all too often, while state-administered achievement tests measure performance, they have little value for instruction. This minimizes their usefulness in an accountability system that assumes information from tests will result in appropriate changes in instruction. To address this problem, the Commission calls for states to use the nine requirements as steps to create responsible state assessment systems, including tests that improve both learning and accountability. Each requirement is supported by reasons for its importance.

The Commission of nationally recognized experts in assessment, curriculum, and instruction was convened by five national associations representing administrators and teachers: American Association of School Administrators, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Education Association, and National Middle School Association.

What If We Ended Social Promotion

Education Week – Robert Hauser

http://www.edweek.org/ew/1999/30hauser.h18

Early in its work, the NRC panel decided to consider whether good tests could serve bad purposes. Thus, Hauser and others evaluated the consequences of high-stakes educational decisions that may be based, at least in part, on test scores. In particular, we found--as American schools presently operate--that decisions to place students in typical lower-level tracks and decisions to hold students back to repeat the same grade are not educationally sound. Those decisions hurt students, and good tests will not improve them. This is not to say that all forms of tracking are bad for students, or that all grade retention is necessarily bad for students. Our findings were based on the actual and typical, not the ideal. But research evidence based on actual experience should inform new policies.

Questions? Cherie McCollough cherieUT@hotmail.com , Vickie Reyes:vickie.reyes@tgslc.org , Fernando Vasquez vasquezfernando@yahoo.com