Are we really setting the 'proficiency' bar too high?

Today’s guest blogger is Carolyn Sharette, executive director of the American Preparatory Academies, a set of charter schools operating in the Salt Lake Valley.

APA has recently opened a school in West Valley that serves many immigrant and low-income families. In a meeting earlier this month Carolyn showed me the school’s (pretty impressive) test scores. When I commented on the high percentage of “proficient” students, she acknowledged the compliment . . . then wryly noted that the term “proficient” was, alas, more than a little misleading. It turns out it doesn’t take a very high score to meet that standard.

So when I read that unrealistic proficiency standards were a major problem with No Child Left Behind (and, as I already noted, I completely agree that 100% proficiency is unrealistic and discouraging), I remembered Carolyn’s observation and asked for her comments. Here’s what she wrote back:

“NCLB is a program that was written with students and parents as central beneficiaries. The law is quite simple in concept: it requires that schools assess students every year in basic skills areas (reading and mathematics), and publish that information to parents and to the public. NCLB’s primary purpose was to require transparency regarding school effectiveness and it was a great step forward parents, who really do need to know how well a school teaches if they are to entrust their child to it for 7+ hours each day.

Unfortunately, immediately after its passage segments of the education establishment began a campaign of resistance and misinformation that has persisted for the entire 10 years the law has been in place. Administrators and education leaders resist and fight the program, in subtle and overt ways, undermining the program’s ability to help students and parents.

This relentless 10-year war that has been waged against NCLB has been undertaken with the assistance of the media, which most often gets the information wrong and doesn’t present the salient information parents need. And since parents don’t have a lobby that can watch out for their interests, they are the losers in this battle.

For example, in the Deseret News article Sunday (link below), the author misstates a basic premise of NCLB related to funding. The author states that if a school is deemed “in need of improvement”, it is denied funding. In fact, schools found in need of improvement are eligible for extra help, extra supports and extra funding for their students. For example, schools deemed “in need of improvement” can receive extra funding to run after–school tutoring programs. This is an important error – schools receive more money, not less, if they do not perform at standard.

Another piece of information that would be important for parents to have is: what does “proficiency” mean? In Utah last year, schools were given scores based upon the percentage of their students who scored at a “proficient” level. Many parents think the school percentage indicates the average score of its students. This is not the case. If a school, as was mentioned in the article, has 58% of its students passing the test, parents need to know what “passing” means. Last year, Utah 5th graders needed only to score above 53% in order to “pass” the math test. So, a school’s score of 58% means that only 58% of the students could achieve a score of 53% or above (if we are talking about 5th graders in math). This vital information about the cutoff for “proficiency” has never to my knowledge been published for parents to review. While newspapers may publish the schools’ overall scores, they don’t publish the “cuts”, so the information is nearly meaningless.

NCLB was meant to provide parents with information that would help them know how well the school performed in teaching students to a designated level of mastery. Schools, districts and state agencies instead embraced policies that would conceal actual student achievement levels, ensuring parents could not glean meaningful information from the numbers they published.

While it is understandable that state agencies and school districts might believe such policies and practices work to their benefit, it is a mystery why the media has not picked up on the subterfuge that has gone on for a decade. It is frustrating to those teachers and leaders who are sincerely working to improve educational outcomes, especially for minority and disadvantaged children. NCLB was a potentially powerful and positive tool to help parents clearly see school performance levels, and it provides resources to schools found wanting. Through the efforts of education leaders opposed to the transparency, and the misinformation in the media, NCLB is nearly universally accepted as a failed policy. This “win” for education leaders translates into a huge “loss” for parents and students.”

Okay folks, I’d love to hear your comments, and I will encourage Carolyn to respond as well.

Here, again, are links to Sunday’s article, and editorial, about No Child Left Behind.