Education Week - December 11, 2013 - 6

States Grapple With Setting Common Test-Score Cutoffs
High targets risk
steep drop in results
By Catherine Gewertz
It's one thing for all but a few
states to agree on one shared set
of academic standards. It's quite
another for them to agree on when
students are "college ready" and to
set that test score at a dauntingly
high place. Yet that's what two state
assessment groups are doing.
The two common-assessment consortia
are taking early steps to align
the "college readiness" achievement
levels on their tests with the rigorous
proficiency standard of the National
Assessment of Educational Progress,
a move that is expected to set many
states up for a steep drop in scores.
After all, fewer than four in 10 children
reached the "proficient" level on
the 2013 NAEP in reading and math.
Facing that music on yet another
round of tests will be politically
painful for the many states planning
to use the common-core exams
being developed by the Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium and
the Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers,
or PARCC, in 2015.
But it appears unlikely that students
themselves will feel the sting
right away. That's because states are
taking a wait-and-see approach to
attaching individual-level student
stakes-such as high school graduation
or grade-to-grade promotion-
to those high cutoff scores.
Cautious Approach
Massachusetts, for instance, recently
approved a two-year transition
plan that will keep its statewide
test, the Massachusetts Comprehensive
Assessment System, or MCAS, as
a high school graduation requirement
through 2016 while it decides
whether to use the exams developed
by the 19-member PARCC organization
for that purpose instead.
Education Commissioner Mitch-
ell D. Chester said it doesn't make
sense to expect teenagers to suddenly
meet a college-ready bar in
order to graduate, when four in 10
students who pass the MCAS have to
take at least one remedial class in
state colleges or universities.
"Our system isn't ready to deliver
a college-ready education to all our
students off the bat," he said. "I don't
want to get there by having students
punished by not meeting that bar."
Even in Massachusetts, a state
that consistently outperforms other
states, and many countries, on tests
of scholastic prowess, high school diplomas
often don't signify adequate
preparation for college. That reality
is driving a shift in education leaders'
thinking-and rhetoric-about
common-core tests. In meeting
rooms across the country, the 2015
tests are slowly being recast as a
humbling new starting gate, rather
than an ax ready to fall on schools.
The tests provided by the 25-state
Smarter Balanced consortium will
have four achievement levels, connoting
"thorough," "adequate," "partial,"
or "minimal" understanding
of math and English/language arts
content. PARCC'S will have five levels,
describing students' mastery level as
"distinguished," "strong," "moderate,"
"partial," or "minimal." The collegeready
point-at which public colleges
and universities have agreed to consider
students exempt from remedial
work-is at level 4 on each test.
The U.S. Department of Education,
which is funding the tests' development
as part of its Race to the Top
program, issued rules in 2010 that require
states to report their students'
performance on those tests for federal
accountability. But the rules do not
require states to use the threshold
score for any achievement level-or
any specified scale score-for policy
decisions such as teacher evaluations,
grade-to-grade promotion, high
school graduation, or schools' ratings
under state accountability plans.
Those decisions are up to each state.
A Gradual Ascent?
As states make transition plans
to common-core-aligned tests, they
are showing an inclination to shield
students from the consequences of
lackluster school performance on new
tests with a higher bar.
If Massachusetts decides to replace
the MCAS with PARCC,Mr. Chester
said, he is considering using, at
least for a while, a lower cutoff score
for high school graduation than the
one PARCC states will collectively
choose as the college-ready point.
Louisiana's plan would require
"
receive remediation there.
Arizona and Rhode Island were
two of the states that said in a 2012
survey that they planned to use a
consortium test as a graduation
requirement. Arizona has at least
temporarily stepped back from that
plan, choosing instead to shop for
possible alternatives to the PARCC
exam. Rhode Island plans to use the
PARCC test as a graduation requirement
in 2015, but officials haven't
yet decided what score, or level, students
must reach.
In New Jersey, the class of 2015
will be the last required to take its
High School Proficiency Assessment
to earn a diploma. Students in the
next three graduating classes will
be expected to take the PARCC test,
Our system isn't ready to deliver a collegeready
education to all our students. ... I don't
want to get there by having students punished
by not meeting that bar."
MITCHELL D. CHESTER
Massachusetts Commissioner of Education
schools to produce average scores
at the college-ready level on PARCC
tests in order to earn an A in its accountability
system, but the state
will give schools a decade to reach
that point. The plan exempts high
schools from using PARCC in 2015,
opting instead to stick with its current
end-of-course tests as a graduation
requirement. It eases the
state's traditional promotion gates
at the 4th and 8th grades, too: If 4th
graders fall short of mastery on the
new tests, they could proceed to 5th
grade by a district waiver if they
show their proficiency in other ways.
Instead of being held back for poor
performance on the test, 8th graders
could move on to 9th grade and
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6 | EDUCATION WEEK | December 11, 2013 | www.edweek.org
but won't have to reach a specific
score to graduate, said Assistant
Commissioner Bari A. Erlichson.
That would be too big a leap to expect,
when the current test reflects
8th-to-9th-grade skills, she said.
"Moving all the way to capturing
[an] 11th grade skill set seemed too
drastic," Ms. Erlichson said. "It's not
a reasonable action when you're talking
about student-level decisions."
Requiring states to report their
consortium test scores publicly,
without demanding that they use
specific cutoff scores for policy decisions,
reflects the federal Education
Department's priorities for the
PARCC and Smarter Balanced tests.
Joanne S. Weiss, who oversaw the
Race to the Top Assessment competition
that provided $360 million for
the two consortia in 2010, said the
key is for states in each consortium
to report their students' achievement
on a shared scale. Unlike current
practice, which allows each state
to define "proficiency" as it likes, each
consortium's states-42 states in
all-will agree on a common level of
mastery and show the public where
their students line up relative to it.
"Everyone using the same cut
score for what it means to be proficient
is a huge deal," said Ms. Weiss,
who is now an education consultant.
How the two testing groups will do
that is still a work in progress. The
Smarter Balanced coalition plans to
embed NAEP items in its spring 2014
field test, so it can begin to envision
how students' performance on those
items compares with their performance
on consortium-designed
items, said SBAC Executive Director
Joe Willhoft. That information
will be brought in as "impact data"
as panels of experts discuss where
to set the cutoff scores for the four
achievement levels of the test, he
said. Smarter Balanced will do the
same thing with items from the
Program for International Student
Assessment, or PISA, a high-profile
global assessment, Mr. Willhoft said.
PARCC does not plan to include
NAEP items in its 2014 field test but
is considering other ways to use
NAEP data to inform the setting of
its own cutoff scores, said Jeffrey
Nellhaus, the consortium's assessment
director. Since PARCC modeled
its descriptions of achievement at
each test level after NAEP's, and will
use the national assessment's data
to help it set threshold scores, "it
should follow that PARCC's cut scores
would be in the same ballpark as
NAEP's in terms of rigor," he said.
Ripple Effects
The two testing groups' work to
set a higher level for mastery on
their tests is praised in some quarters
as a welcome boost in expectations.
But in others, it's decried
as a setup for student and school
failure, and a welcome mat for
companies looking to profit from
remediation, school turnaround,
professional development, and
other types of responses to lagging
performance on tests.
"It's all very convenient for the
testing companies, and the textbook
companies, that districts are desperate
to make sure their schools aren't
seen as failing," said Leonie Haimson,
a New York City education activist.
In setting the speed for higher ac-
ademic expectations, ripple effects
at many levels must be considered,
activists and experts say.
Sandy Kress, who helped craft the
No Child Left Behind Act when he
was an education adviser to President
George W. Bush, has watched
with dismay as policymakers ramp
up expectations quickly only to see
them backfire. In Texas, where he
practices law, Mr. Kress points to
the recent domino effect of a precipitous
drop in scores on a new, more
rigorous test. State lawmakers responded
by easing up on testing and
curriculum requirements.
What's needed, he said, is a reasonable
middle ground, in which
states boost expectations enough to
"feel the pinch," but do it gradually
enough, with enough support, that
the effort doesn't go down in flames.
When using the mastery levels of
PARCC and Smarter Balanced tests in
policymaking, states would be wise
to "set goals that are stretch-but-notbreak,"
said Kati Haycock, the president
of the Washington-based Education
Trust, which advocates policies
that help disadvantaged students.
"When you ask yourself how many
kids are hitting that [NAEP] level of
proficiency now, and ask yourself how
fast we can move systems and kids,"
she said, "there is no way this is anything
less than a 10-year transition."
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knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly
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org. Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
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Education Week - December 11, 2013

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