Are standardized tests doing the job?
The assumed value of standardized school tests is that they gauge how well students perform at each grade level, how well students perform at each school and how well each class is progressing academically as it progresses from one grade to the next.
But that assumption works only if the tests are sufficiently rigorous and only if exams are calibrated so that third-graders and eighth-graders, for instance, are taking tests that are equally appropriate for each grade level.
A new study from a Washington, D.C.-based education policy institute challenges these assumptions.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute evaluated standardized tests in 26 states, including Illinois. The institute -- which has its own points of view, including advocacy of school choice -- concluded that the difficulty of standardized tests varies substantially from state to state; that math tests generally are more rigorous than reading; and that some states, since the advent of the federal No Child Left Behind law, have made their tests less demanding, perhaps to enhance their chances of demonstrating the annual progress required by NCLB.
As for Illinois, the study indicates that our math tests for third through eighth grades are less rigorous than most other states evaluated. Among these states, the report concludes, only Colorado gives its eighth-graders a math test less difficult than Illinois' exam.
The study also details inconsistencies in the way Illinois calibrates its tests from grade to grade. While several of the state's tests, particularly in math, are short on rigor by comparison, the reading exam for third-graders is among the nation's toughest. Such inconsistencies, if accurately identified, would hamper educators' ability to tell how well an individual or class of students is progressing as it moves through elementary and middle school.
The Illinois State Board of Education downplays the Fordham Institute's report. And, indeed, it is a single report from an organization that does have its own biases.
Nonetheless, the study intrigues. State education officials and legislators ought to greet the report not with defensiveness but with curiosity and additional checking of their own.
The report gives Illinois reason to make a candid self-evaluation of its tests, to identify for itself any problems with exams being too soft or not properly calibrated from one grade to the next, and to repair those problems.
If honest and reliable self-evaluation by Illinois finds the Fordham Institute's concerns to be misplaced, so be it. But there's no value in glossing over shortcomings, if they exist. Holding Illinois students to lower standards than their peers in other states would be no favor to either the children or the rest of us who, before we know it, will be counting on them to make quality contributions in jobs and professions across the state.