Test swap generates warnings from experts
WHERE Oklahoma students were once required to pass four of seven subject-specific tests aligned with state academic standards to graduate, current law now requires they take the ACT or SAT and there is no passing score required to graduate.
Other states are considering a similar swap of state tests for standardized, national college-entrance exams, and issues being raised in those states point to similar challenges that may lie ahead in Oklahoma.
In Florida, the state contracted with the Assessment Solutions Group to review a proposal that would allow students to take the ACT, the SAT, or the state’s Algebra I and Grade 10 English exams. The resulting report highlighted several areas of concern.
“Based on the results of the test forms analyzed, neither the SAT nor the ACT assessment is fully aligned to the Florida Algebra 1 standards,” the report said. “Both the ACT and SAT assessments would need to be augmented to assess the full breadth and depth of the Algebra 1 standards as called for by federal regulations.”
To comply with Florida’s English standards, reviewers concluded “the ACT would need major adjustments.”
Augmenting the ACT and SAT is possible, but the report said that would increase state “cost and complexity.” At the same time, failure to augment the tests could run afoul of federal regulations.
“Without such augmentation, the ACT and possibly SAT tests might not meet the United States Department of Education (USED) peer review criteria for aligned tests, thus jeopardizing the federal approval of Florida’s plan to offer choice of high school tests to its school districts,” the report found.
Oklahoma adopted new academic standards in recent years, so similar problems could arise from the use of off-the-shelf, nationally standardized tests that aren’t designed to align with Oklahoma standards.
Researchers also concluded the proposed Florida change could mask failure in poor-performing schools by inflating performance in school-accountability measurements. When it came to measuring English learning, “Larger schools with a greater number of lower-performing students are advantaged by using the alternate tests (ACT/SAT),” the report noted.
Education Week reports that Oklahoma is one of two states nationally that plans to allow school districts to choose between the ACT or SAT, although four other states (including Florida) are debating the idea.
Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, tells Education Week that states will be “just grasping at straws for any kind of comparability” among school districts that take different tests.
Education Week also reports it’s “unclear” if Oklahoma’s interchangeable district-by-district use of the two tests in the state’s school-accountability system “will fly with the feds,” noting the U.S. Department of Education has already “told the state it needs to pick one test or the other as its primary high school exam, in its feedback letter to Oklahoma.”
Oklahomans deserve to know if they are getting their taxpayer money’s worth in student learning at public schools. Clear, transparent measurement of student results is crucial to the process. The issues being raised by experts across the nation suggest Oklahoma’s current system may fall short of achieving that goal.