Parents Across Rhode Island

The following is testimony submitted to the Rhode Island General Assembly in support of legislation protecting students from the harmful and negative effects of high stakes testing and the rush to implement the Common Core standards with it's accompanying tests.  For additional testimonies, please return to

Testimony

Robert Hicks

Superintendent, New Shoreham

I begin by stating that while I testify against the use of the NECAP as a graduation proficiency measure, I do not oppose a graduation proficiency measures per se, only this specific application of the NECAP. I would also compliment and support RIDE in its overall effort to improve our state’s educational system; my criticism is limited and specific. That said, as constructed, the NECAP forms an unfair measure of graduation proficiency in mathematics, lacking in external validity.

The grade-by-grade trajectory of both our curricular expectations and the NECAP does not offer students a fair opportunity to succeed. In a very simple way this can be seen in the NECAP’s proficiency decline from eighth to eleventh grade. Percent proficient in mathematics declines 24 points, from 58 to 34 percent, nearly a quarter of the population lost proficiency between two test administrations. This led me to look at what was behind the drop, how to illustrate it, and took me to two other New England states, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Massachusetts implemented a graduation proficiency test as part of its rise to the nation’s highest performing state. It justifiably wanted to establish the validity of its assessment (the MCAS), to be sure it measured what they wanted it to measure. They chose the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) since it is benchmarked against rigorous international standards, so would assure the MCAS was appropriately calibrated. Interestingly, while NECAP proficiencies plummet from grade 8 to 11, proficiency in Massachusetts increases over the same grade span. Since Massachusetts was externally validated against NAEP, this added to my concern regarding NECAP results.

My goal was to compare NECAP to the NAEP to better understand the pattern of NECAP results. New Hampshire is the only state to administer both the NECAP and the optional grade 12 NAEP (grades 4 and 8 are mandatory). Hence the review of New Hampshire assessment results to compare the NECAP with the NAEP. The most recent year in which both are available is 2009, although current grade 4-8 results of both assessments show consistent patterns in New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

The table below compares proficiency percentages for the NECAP and NAEP in grades 4, 8, and 11/12 (the high school NECAP is administered in grade 11 and the NEAP in grade 12). As can be seen, through eighth grade the NECAP is considerably easier than the NAEP, meaning the same students perform better. In fourth and eighth grades more students are proficient on the NECAP than the NAEP, 19 and 23 percent respectively. This changes dramatically in high school where NECAP and NAEP proficiency levels are nearly identical. In other words, benchmarked against the NAEP the NECAP becomes suddenly and without warning remarkably more difficult for high school students.

Separate and apart from the proficiency level described above, we should look also at the basic performance level in high school (partially proficient on the NECAP), since this is the level used to determine graduation. These levels are closely equivalent in grades 4 and 8 on the NAEP and NECAP. However, at the secondary level, where graduation proficiency is determined, on the NAEP 74% of students achieve this level while only 64% on students reach it on the NECAP. This means that achieving the required performance level for graduation is more difficult on the NECAP than it is on the NAEP.

So, when benchmarking the NECAP against the NAEP in mathematics it is evident that through the elementary grades most students and families come to believe they are on track in mathematics when many of them are truly not. However, when students have “skin in the game” (their graduation), the assessment gets more difficult, by one measure - the measure used to determine graduation - even more difficult than our nation’s internally benchmarked assessment, and setting students up for failure.

What happened? As compared to the NAEP’s internationally benchmarked standards, NECAP-based GSE’s and GLEs’ backload rigor, making elementary and middle grades relatively easy, while lowering the boom with a much more challenging high school assessment. (This is reinforced in our transition to the Common Core, where math content is substantively accelerated through pre-secondary grades.) We have not properly scaffolded our expectations to properly prepare students for a high stakes assessment. This is not so much a problem in states that use the NECAP as an aspirational assessment, but when it is misused, it becomes harmful to 4,169 members (40%) of the class of 2014.

One argument I hear from RIDE for the graduation requirement is that we have a responsibility to show that our graduates have a basic proficiency. I agree, but we also have a matching responsibility to do it right, a responsibility we have not met. Another argument is that the retest and waiver provisions address any weaknesses in the system. While these measures are ameliorative, they do not address its fundamental unfairness.

Also, the progress exemption undermines the basic purpose of the requirement by certifying as proficient students who do not meet the standard, and violates an essential principle that students who are equally proficient be equitably treated. Please place yourselves in the shoes of a parent whose child is denied graduation solely on the basis of this requirement while a less proficient student walks across the stage. To illustrate how this works (these are not real NECAP numbers, only an illustration) assume the minimum proficiency for graduation on the assessment is 80%. Also assume your child achieves 75 on the first administration and my child a 60. On the second administration your child achieves a 77, a gain of 2 points, and my child a 70, a gain of 10 points.

According to RIDE, even though your child was more proficient than mine on both administrations, my child graduates and yours does not! How outraged would you be? I have mixed feelings here, in one sense I do not support this legislation since I am not, as previously stated, inherently opposed to a graduation proficiency test. I am, however, strongly opposed to an unfair and invalid measure used for this purpose. Still, this is likely to be only a short term problem, as the implementation of the PARCC and the Common Core will soon offer an opportunity to properly calibrate our proficiency measure. My hope is that RIDE will recognize that the NECAP is not appropriately suitable to be used as a proficiency and will work with other participating states to assure that PARCC will be properly developed to do so. In that hope is not realized, than this legislation is unfortunately necessary.