Looking at STAR Results With Eyes (and Minds) Wide Open

ISSUE 77 | SEPTEMBER 12, 2007

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LOOK AT RISING ENROLLMENT IN TOUGHER COURSES

Yet, buried several pages into O'Connell's press release, this owl spotted passing references to a dramatic improvement in the number (and percentage) of middle schoolers taking algebra, and to the number of high schoolers taking biology, chemistry, and algebra II. Here are some of the salient facts:

• In 2001-2002, 133,270 eighth graders took the algebra CST (29 percent), and in 2006-2007, this climbed to 238,858 (49 percent)
• In 2001-2002, 60,261 tenth graders took the algebra II CST (14 percent), and in 2006-2007, this climbed to 102,655 (21 percent)
• In 2001-2002, 164,730 tenth graders took the biology CST (37 percent), and in 2006-2007, this climbed to 247,611 (50 percent).

This owl is hardly a math maven, but I know that when an increasing percentage of students take tougher classes, the schoolwide scores are likely to decline. The college entrance exams provide an example of this. The more you push kids to take it, the lower schoolwide scores are likely to skew

Columnist and author Peter Schrag noted the significance of this pattern in his column of August 29 in the Sacramento Bee. In that column, "The Test Results: Lots of Numbers, Not Much Light," Mr. Schrag wrote:

"Even so, the test results released last week have more encouraging news than O'Connell acknowledged. As the early headlines indicated, there was no overall score change from 2006 to 2007 in the percentage of students rated proficient in math . But the flat math numbers hide the impressive increase in the number of students taking what, at least in name, are more rigorous courses and the steady decline in middle- and high-school Mickey-Mouse math course enrollments. In 2003, the first year it was given, 505,000 students took the algebra I test; in 2007, 741,000 took it [in all grades]."

Read the full story.

GOOD NEWS

So here is wonderful news. It shows that teachers are expecting higher achievement from middle and high school students. Finally, students are acting like they are college bound, and taking the tough classes in math and science. Finally, educators are opening the eighth grade gate, just as the math content standards directed, to bring the algebra curriculum to all students The figures below reveal they are halfway there.

Here is one example of this happy news. Look at the participation rates and results (at the Proficient and Advanced levels) of students taking the eighth grade algebra CST.

School Participation Percent Scoring
Year Rates for 8th Graders Proficient or Advanced

2001-2002 ....................... 29% ................................. 39%
2006-2007 ....................... 48% ................................. 38%

This owl considers this to be a phenomenal accomplishment. In six years, the participation rate improved by two-thirds, while the outcomes barely changed. This is the happy news.

BAD NEWS

But here is the not so happy news. What has happened to the 52 percent of eighth graders who did not take algebra? If one were to hold hands with this owl, and fly closer to ground level, one would find that statewide, the opening of the gates to algebra has found some students running through, while others are walking, stumbling and crawling toward the destination. What is no surprise to real-life teachers facing real-life students in living, breathing schools is that some kids come to middle school prepared to master algebra, and some do not. Some of those who do not are guided back to the missing rungs in the ladder of knowledge and, with the help of wise educators, rebuild the missing rungs and start climbing again. But that describes the few. Far, far too many are not guided back to find those missing rungs.

Is the missing rung a fourth-grade teacher who failed to reach most students with the lessons on fractions? Was it the third-grade teacher who left most of her students in a trail of dust as she lectured about negative numbers? Or was it the fifth-grade teacher who, in her first year of teaching was placed in fifth-grade by a seniority-driven assignments system, and then botched her entire unit on fractions, decimals and equivalents?

A student who was taught by one of these teachers might, conceivably, survive one missed rung in the ladder. But a student who has the bad luck to get two of these three teachers, let alone two of them in a row, is done with math. Cooked. Short of a miracle—a brilliant tutor, an after-school session with a special teacher—this student is unlikely to pass algebra. And that means no college unless college means grade 13: community college.

IMAGINING BETTER NEWS IN THE FUTURE

Allow this owl to offer a series of "what ifs" at this point in our story. If the governor and the legislature could achieve the following

* Agree to fund CALPADS, create a student identifier for every student, and create a teacher identifier for every teacher.

* Fund the education of district- and county-level research and evaluation directors to analyze student results in light of the teachers who taught them.

* Assign fifth-grade teachers only after making sure they have mastered the skills of fifth-grade math, and can deliver the instruction successfully.

* Replace the mantra chanting about data-driven instruction with serious work by an army of evidence-driven, forensic statisticians who can find meaningful patterns in the raw numbers.

they just might discover that matching the right teacher to the right students would enable far more eighth graders to walk and run through those open gates.

Perhaps then the governor and the legislature might learn what Hank Levin and the Accelerated School reformers discovered more than two decades ago—that remediation should never mean asking the same teachers to deliver the same curriculum, at a slower pace, to the same students who didn't get it the first time around. Or perhaps they might find that the textbooks in third grade were a problem.

This is not an impossible scenario. Tennessee looks at student and teacher results in relation to each other. Tennessee measures the value teachers and schools add to what students know when they first sit down in classrooms. California could do what Tennessee has been doing since 1992, if our legislators and school board trustees had the will, the wisdom and the courage to face what they might discover: that students are not equally prepared to learn; that teachers are not equally prepared to teach; that too often the teachers we want to keep unfortunately leave the profession, while the teachers we want to leave the profession stay a lifetime; that we put teachers' job rights ahead of students' rights to learn, and forfeit the responsibility to match teachers with students primarily to advance learning.

These steps are feasible politically, financially, pedagogically. These steps are ethical. These steps can be taken by adults in charge, both those who govern in the legislature and those who sit on school boards. I hope this old owl lives long enough to see at least some legislators and some school board trustees summon the will, the wisdom and the courage to start stepping in this direction.

REFERENCES

Value-added assessment. From School Wise Press's Virtual Library

Williams Sanders. From School Wise Press's Virtual Library and from Blueprint Magazine

About CALPADS. From the California Educational Technology Professionals Association; and from the California Department of Education; and SPI O'Connell's press release championing funding for CALPADS.

SPI O'Connell's press release on the STAR results.

SPI O'Connell's press release on the API, AYP and PI results.

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