Standards not high enough?

In this post on Education Week, Alexander Russo asks an interesting question about the rigor of our state’s 10th grade assessments. He questions whether it is still “High Stakes” when greater than 90% of seniors met the standard in reading and writing. Of course, the results are much lower in math, 70%, raising a concern for the new end of course assessment requirement for graduation in the future.

I thought the intent of NCLB was to get ALL students to standard as a requirement of graduation. So, if 90+% results in questions about rigor of the standards where does it stop? Maybe I’m reading something onto the post that was not intended, but I don’t think so. It is an interesting dilemma, however, as we move towards national standards. When states begin to score at this rate on those standards, that I believe he supports, will he raise the same question?
I encourage you to read the Seattle P.I. article referenced in the post. It provides a lot of information on our state’s assessment results including this year’s 10th grade scores on the High School Proficiency exam where 78% met standard in reading, 84% in writing, and only 43% in math. Preliminary 10th grade scores for Tahoma High School scores were 87% in reading, 87% in writing, and 49% in math.

With more time, additional support, and after more attempts we expect the reading and writing percentages will improve. Math, however, remains a problem at the state and district level in math. The problem will become more of an issue in the short term as we move to end-of-course assessments.

In Superintendent Dorn’s words:

He warned that high school math scores could get worse before they get better, because of a change in the way students will be tested, beginning next year.

The state of Washington will be changing to end-of-course exams for algebra and geometry as a replacement for the general math test. Dorn believes the new tests will be more challenging than the high school math exam, which includes a lot of general math along with some algebra and geometry.

And there's an additional problem he's been talking about for the past year: many of the first students taking the end-of-course exams will take them in 10th grade, years after they completed algebra or geometry in 8th or 9th grade. This issue will disappear eventually, but Dorn worries about next year's 10th graders.

He also is worried about the Class of 2013 being able to meet the standards necessary for graduation that include reading, writing, math, and science. That should concern all of us. And, how will the shift to the common core standards influence the results?

"We will expect more than 90 percent of the class of 2013 to be proficient in math by the time they reach graduation. I'm not confident that will happen," he said.