Tougher standards? Teacher tests?

By Lonnie Harp

A nervous pause recently fell over a panel of Kentucky legislators when one member questioned whether high-pressure testing really could make schools better.

The fact that Kentucky now has spent seven years and about $45 million designing a school test to distinguish improving schools from the ones that are slipping would give anyone pause. But a leading state senator, frustrated that the expensive measuring stick is not trustworthy, boldly suggested maybe there's no way to produce a test that will do the job to everyone's satisfaction.

"Tell us if we should just fold up our tents and go home," Senate Democratic leader David Karem said to testing experts from the University of California-Los Angeles and the University of Kansas, who were brought in to consult on improvements. "Maybe we just need to admit that we can't do this."

Pauses being just pauses and not climactic surrender, the meeting, of course, moved along after an anxious moment. But the jarring question remains: If no test is so complete and sound as to give us ironclad grounds for identifying bad schools or bad teachers, will all the rhetoric about higher standards and better classrooms turn into embarrassing backpedaling?

That appears to be happening already. And by putting accountability on hold, one wonders whether politicians, education experts and parents were ever really serious about education reform in the first place.

Just as it was time to get serious about intervening, Kentucky opted to forgive all the schools it had put on notice just two years ago for falling scores. An imperfect test, it turned out, was a bigger political concern than mediocre schools. The state is now working furiously to remake the exams in deference to teachers and parents who complained the system was faulty and unfair.

Gov. John Engler of Michigan, who has pounded the lectern often arguing for the need to crack down on bad schools, had a change of heart this year, too. The GOP governor put off sanctions against 21 schools facing state action for not raising test scores enough after three years. A spokesman said it was enough that Engler's hot rhetoric had sent schools a "wake-up call" about improving.

Everyone says they want to find the bad guy, but no one is willing to cast the first stone.

The retreat in Michigan came almost a year after groups of parents boycotted the state's more challenging tests for fear their children's scores would not be as flattering as the grades they were making in class. That's an issue in Kentucky, too, where many students making B's and A's in classes are scoring "novice" and "apprentice" on the state tests that ask them to analyze and explain what they know.

Massachusetts just moved toward a brand-new state test that emphasizes analytical skills and student writing. The state education department has been working hard to prepare teachers, parents and politicians for the bleak scores they may see come November.

But the latest news on bad test scores in Massachusetts showed how political pressure most often works in such cases. When more new teachers than expected, 59% in all, recently failed the state's reading and writing competency test, the state school board simply voted to lower the passing mark. John Silber, the state school board president and another tough-talker on higher standards, cast the deciding vote to lower the passing score. He worried that some of the teachers who failed might sue the state saying its competency standards were too high.

Massachusetts eventually reinstated their higher standards after a storm of criticism. Perhaps others will follow their lead.

But if previous experience is any indication, there may be predictable phases of coping with high-stakes school tests: When the paltry scores first arrive, there is shock tinged with a sense of optimism about getting better. That's followed by a feeling of perceived unfairness built into the rating system. That suspicion gives way to a certainty that the test is flawed, which begets an aggressive lobbying of legislators for fixes. Then a redesign of the system prompts some observant lawmaker to suggest that a program for evaluating schools may never be good enough.

The top national testing experts can make you believe school tests can pinpoint the quality of a teacher or a school, and the next minute they identify enough technical flaws and statistical caveats to make you believe that a two-out-of-three coin flip might be a reasonable alternative.

Kentucky has $7 million a year set aside for a new and improved testing program, which is now out for bids. Panels of educators, legislators and national experts will work through August trying to figure out a fair way to use the scores to rate and judge schools. The clock for identifying declining schools has been set back to 2002 - enough time for the school-reform debate to take plenty of new political turns and for the state's intentions for turning around lagging schools to be something politicians can talk about without having to suffer for.

For now, one has to wonder whether a state really can run a program that penalizes dozens or perhaps hundreds schools with less than airtight evidence. Bad schools may not do much to transform needy students, but they are turning politicians' tough talk into mush pretty quickly.

Lonnie Harp is an education reporter for 'The Courier-Journal' in Louisville, Ky.

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