Test Score OverKill

Nearly everyone goes overboard with annual test score coverage, as usual (click below for most if not all of them).  Whose coverage did you find the most useful?

Overview:

Elementary schools garner  high marks, others fall short CDH
From Carpentersville to Huntley, elementary schools exceeded state standards this year while high schools and, to a lesser extent, middle schools struggled to keep up.

 

Achievement Gaps:

School report cards: Chicago students' achievement gap CST
Over the last five years, minority and low-income public high school students have fallen even farther behind their white and more affluent classmates on state tests and the ACT, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found.

Left behind CST
Between 2003 and 2007, white students' reading scores went up while black, Hispanic and low-income students' scores went down. Black students' math scores also dropped.

Different Angles:

Girls outpace boys on tests Tribune
Girls in Illinois grade schools outperformed boys on every state achievement exam last school year, according to a Tribune analysis, a twist in performance that has perplexed state officials and educators across the state.

State writing exam pass rate plummets Tribune
Only half of Illinois 5th graders passed the state writing exam last school year, a precipitous fall of nearly 20 percentage points in just three years, according to data released Wednesday.

Specific Efforts:

Before-and-after help yields results CST
Like other public elementary schools statewide that have seen big five-year jumps in test scores, Willard has found it’s not just what happens during class that counts. What occurs before and after the school bell rings — touches as small as Marcello’s closing-bell routine — is important, too.

Students' achievement gap Chicago Sun Times
At Hyde Park Academy, a neighborhood high school serving black, mostly low-income students, reading scores have dropped dramatically over the last five years.

Two schools make plans to address 'achievement gap' CDH
Two area high schools are trying a new approach to bolster test scores for struggling black and Hispanic students by offering them additional assistance programs aimed almost entirely at minorities.

Success story: Raymond Ellis Elementary School CDH
After six straight years on school improvement status, the school made its improvement goals for the second consecutive year and removed itself from the danger list.

2 high schools fall behind for first time since 2003 CDH
St. Charles East and Geneva high schools can empathize with each other after falling short of federal education standards for the first time in years.

Comments

[Rod Estvan]

Well, I looked this morning at the test data before I looked at any of the articles in the newspapers. Since my job at Access Living is about students with disabilities I look at the learning gap between CPS students with and without disabilities.

If we look at the reading scores at 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 11th grades we get a fairly good understanding of the problem. Below are the gaps between disabled and non-disabled students in the percentage that are reading at or above state standards:

2005 2006 2007

29.3 37.2 38.2 Grade 3 gap

36.9 43.2 43.6 Grade 5 gap

51.4 56.9 56.8 Grade 8 gap

41.2 36.9 31 Grade 11 gap

Really the only decline in the gap was at grade 11. This in my opinion is mostly due to the decline in the percentage of all CPS 11th graders that were testing at or above state standards in reading, about a 4.6% over all decline. No major newspaper discussed this gap, although I was interviewed by several newspapers about the issue.

Access Living believes as things currently stand there is no way CPS can close these gaps by 2014. For students with disabilities attending CPS their perforance relative to their non-disabled peers is getting worse or is stagnant.

Access Living is currently attempting to get data from the New Schools Office on whether the gap situation between disabled and non disabled students is any different in new Ren 2010 schools. We will be meeting with the New Schools Executive Officer in December about this. Hopefully these schools will show a better pattern than we are seeing for the school district as a whole.

Rod Estvan
Access Living

[Recheck AYP]

My school did not make AYP in reading for students with disabilities in reading. For the last two years I had to test my two EMH students on the ISAT. They were in fifth grade, reading at the second grade level and took the fifth grade test. It demoralized them. They could not even read a passage let alone answer comprehension questions. I was very upset because they were so upset. This is senseless yet we are forced to do this. Common sense is non-existent.

[Rod Estvan]

In relation to the testing issue for the students with mild cognitive disablities formally called EMH. (PS the American Psychological Ass. has recommended school districts stop using educationally mentally handicapped)

If you felt so strongly about this issue you could have requested that an IEP meeting be held to revisit the question of whether or not the student required an alternative test.

I am well aware that the school district will tell staff that specific catagories of students with disabilities should be tested, but if one looks at the CPS IEP form you can clearly see it is a team decision. But I would also suspect that your school had other far higher functioning students who did not meet state standards in reading and the two cognitively disabled students did not push your school over the top by themselves.

Moreover, your school was required to have at least 45 disabled students in all the testing grades even to have a determination made in relation to AYP for that subgroup. The safe harbor target for that subgroup was 55% I believe this year.

Our concern is really less if schools are making AYP, but far more with the gap between non-disabled and disabled in schools. If schools are closing the gap that to us indicates some progress is being made for the subgroup of students with disabilities. Because AYP is a moving target going to 100% in the 2013-2014 school year, it is not a fully meaningful picture of the progess students with disabilities are maiking.

To understand the gap, look at your school's report card. Look at the number of students with and without disabilities who are meeting or exceeding state standards. You can go back several years on the ISBE website and look at your school's data. You can measure the gap, from year to year and see if it is frozen, closing, or growing regardless of whether or not AYP is met for the subgroup.

Rod Estvan
Access Living

Thanks Rod,

We're showing great progress in the subgroupies (Is that politically correct?). Unfortunately, we didn't make AYP for the second straight year because of that group. Any chance we can get a waiver for making progress?

[Rod Estvan]

1:10 I would suggest that schools will not only not be making AYP for students with disabilities as a subgroup, but many will not be making AYP for all groups. Recall that each year the safe harbor number goes up. Until 2013-2014 when it is 100%.

So there is no point in getting a wavier at this point for a subgroup, because each year this will get harder. I would predict that if we get to 2013 and all the non-disabled students at your school are 100% at or above state standards and your students with disabilities are testing with the majority at or above state standards your school will not only get a waiver, but praised by the Feds.

It is very unrealistic to expect 100% of students with disabilities tested to reach state standards by 2013 or ever. But it is realistic to expect that the majority of these students who are tested with required modifications will reach these standards. In fact a few CPS schools are close right now or better than a majority.

For example Hanson Park School which has many significantly disabled students in 2007 has 46.7% of its 8th grade students reading at state standards, Blaine Elementary has 90% of its 8th grade students with disabilities reading at or above state standards, Ravenswood Elementary School has 33% of its 8th grade students with disabilities at or above in reading,25% of 8th graders with disabilities at Stockton School are now testing at or above state standards.

High School is a completely different story there are almost no high schools within reach of even 50% of students with disabilities meeting or exceeding state standards in reading. Some high schools generally considered to be higher performing such as Nobel Street Charter High have as few as 7% of their juniors with disabilities reading at state standards, Simeon a high school with some admission standards has just under 9% of it juniors with disabilities reading at state standards. Sadly there are many CPS high schools that have no juniors with disabilities reading at or above state standards.

The problems for educating students with disabilities at the high school level are very big and the CPS has not effectively addressed this problem in a meaningful manner.

Rod Estvan
Access Living

I am not understanding. Please explain how a student with a serious processing disability be expected to meet the same standards as a student without a processing disorder? How does a learning disabled student with a reading level of third grade pass a test that was written for students in the 11th grade? If a special education student meets the state standards on the Prairie State, then is he really special ed? What happens to the "performing below grade level" portion in the definition of needing services?

I think the whole problem comes down to schools not having tough enough standards for admission into special ed programs. If students want modifications then they should EARN them. We're letting too many low performing kids into special education and their bringing down the scores of the whole subgroup. If kids were told you want services, then let's see you score above the 60th percentile on the Learning First test I guarantee they'd be working hard to succeed. We've coddled these kids for too long. If these tests prove anything its that special ed students are lazy. I'm not surprised either. Afterall, they know the lower they score the more we reduce their workload. Its time we have these kids pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and succeed. Its about time we stop seeing these students as disabilities and start seeing them as children--lazy children who need discipline only then can we have a classroom where we all succeed in our goal of 100% college graduates.

"Although there are many barriers facing people with disabilities today, the single greatest obstacle we face as a community is our own sense of inferiority, internalized oppression and shame." -- Sarah Triano

[Rod Estvan]

My supervisor Sarah Triano, program director at Access Living, will be honored 1;22 quoted her. Sarah as some of you may know was a student with a disability and she in fact had to litigate to get accomodations at the college level, in California as I recall. I am got sure she would agree with the idea of people with disabilities needing to earn modifications. Although there are some students that use disability as an escape route and they unforunately learn in some cases they can get away with this avoidance behavior.

11:44 indicates that a student with a serious processing disability that has the impact of having the student read only at the 3rd grade level must take the PSAE at the 11th grade.

If the serious processing disability amounts to identification as a student with a cognitive disability the student clearly can be given the alternative assessment and not be included in the AYP subgroup of students with disabilities if an IEP team makes that determination. If the student is identified as having a serious learning disability it becomes somewhat more complex.

It is more complex because the ISBE has created an impression based on its distribution of materials related to the alternative assessment that all LD students should be tested. The current document is called "Illinois Alternate Assessment Participation Guidelines 2007 - 2008" and can be located at the ISBE website. If you read it carefully it does not say that all LD students must be tested, in fact it says that having a certain special education eligibility label or receiving certain services can neither include or exclude a student from the standard testing pool.

Moreover the "Guidelines" state the fact that a "student’s achievement is significantly below that of same-age peers, even when compared to other students with disabilities" can not be the sole criteria for excluding the student from the standard test. The ISBE establishes two tests for a student with a disability to be removed from the standard testing pool. They are:

1.The points at which the student accesses the general education curriculum more closely reflect Alternate Assessment Framework than age/grade-appropriate
benchmarks.

2. When compared to other students with disabilities, the student requires more frequent, more intensive instruction
given in small incremental steps in order to apply and transfer skills across settings.

If the student fits the two tests they can be given the alternate assessment and excluded from the testing pool. Legally the CPS may exclude probably about 8,180 students with disabilities in total from either the ISAT or PSAT under the federal safe harbor provisions of NCLB.

The reality is that CPS teachers complain about students inappropriately being tested but they never take on the issue at IEP meetings. Moreover, if a parent agrees with an individual teacher that standardized testing in relation to ISAT or PSAE is inappropriate for the student and the rest of the team does not, that parent can file for due process on that issue and ask a hearing officer to decide the issue.

Students with learning or emotional disabilities who have not been educated appropriately because of the failures of the school district and who can not even approach standards are correctly tested in order that the CPS be held accountable for its failures as a school district. We at Access Living hold the school district accountable for these students not individual CPS teachers. It was not individual CPS teachers that cut $26 million from the special education budget two years ago, nor was it the teachers who have failed to pay for additional instructional time some of these students need in order to meet state standards. These students are the collective responsibility of the school district.

Rod Estvan
Access Living

[Disagree, Dissent stand up for your student]

Rod,
I wish you were running special education for the CPS system.I learn more from your comments than any six hour inservice from OSS. You are right in that special education teachers do need to dissent more at IEP meetings. General education teachers can dissent also even though that fact is not widely distributed. Children with cognitive disabilities were allowed to take a lower form of the ITBS but not on the ISAT. Unfortunately, the dictatorial nature of some case managers do not allow even a discussion at the IEP conference let alone a difference of opinion regarding testing or one on one aides. Many special education teachers are not certified, parents are not aware of their rights and the tenured special education teachers who do stand up are vilified by CPS. Something needs to change because we are losing good special education teachers who aee the situation as hopeless.