Naomi Chudowsky, Nancy Kober, Keith S. Gayler, and Madlene Hamilton, Center on Education Policy
August 2002
Standards-based education reform can be chipped away from many directions. Perhaps most predictable was the claim that these high standards, tough tests and "high stakes" consequences would prove harmful to disadvantaged and minority youngsters who would get lower scores and suffer more adverse consequences, such as having their high school diplomas delayed or denied. That's part of what led to the easing of academic standards in the aftermath of the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty, an easing that did much to place us at risk as a nation and that, we now know, didn't do anything good for the poor and minority children on whose behalf it was done. And that is, in effect, the conclusion of this new report from the Center on Education Policy, headed by Jack Jennings, who for several decades shaped federal policy as top education staffer for the Democrats on the House education committee. The 145-page report (you can also get a glossy 12-page "action summary") covers a lot of ground associated with high school exit exams, but the press coverage, such as it is, has centered on one narrow finding: that black and Hispanic students are less apt to pass these state tests on the first try. The implication, of course, is that exit exams are already having an adverse impact on minority youngsters. Yet this "finding" turns out to be based on one-year data from exactly three states. Moreover, just about every place that uses high-school exit exams permits multiple re-takes of those tests by students who fail them. Even the authors acknowledge that, for those states where they could get such data, "the cumulative passing rates were very high." (In Indiana, for example, about two-thirds of the students passed the first time but 98.5% of those in the class of 2000 eventually got their diplomas.) The report's policy recommendations are numerous and many are sound, pro-student but not averse to standards-based reform. More problematic is the suggestion that states allow alternate methods (besides test scores) for students to show their stuff. Examples include "waivers or substitute tests; collections of student work&; written recommendations from teachers&; or good grades and good attendance&." I've no problem with states creating some alternatives for youngsters who, for a thousand reasons, freeze at the sight of a test or cannot be properly tested. Testing itself is not the point. But when we head down the slippery slope that starts with teacher recommendations, for example, we begin to revert to the bad old days when every teacher and school set its own "standards" and there were no common statewide standards that everybody had to meet. You can obtain a copy by surfing to the Center's homepage (http://www.cep-dc.org/) and then opting for the PDF or HTML version.
