Does all of this talk about student testing in our public schools have you as confused as a fourth-grader taking a trigonometry exam?
In Colorado, we have gone from CSAP to TCAP to PARCC. Nationally, we are moving from No Child Left Behind to Every Student Succeeds, which is being hailed as the greatest bipartisan achievement since the last congressional pay increase.
Well, don’t fret it, folks. All of this testing means absolutely nothing unless something is done to convert test results into action. And there is little to indicate that will occur.
Any real reform of the education system will require accountability, not just tests with fancy names. In the meantime, the status-quo establishment that runs most school districts will merely keep asking for more money without any plan to use it more effectively.
Pardon the gloomy talk, but anyone hoping for change in a state with a 20 percent dropout rate and a high percentage of students who can’t perform up to grade level — in 2014, 82.4 percent of Colorado seventh-graders failed to reach the target in social studies, for example — had better be content with what we have. Merit pay for teachers? Dream on.
A law passed five years ago in Colorado to evaluate teachers on the basis of standardized tests and performance evaluations is a long way from being implemented. Good luck with that.
In Jefferson County, when the school board ordered evaluations based on the 2013-14 school year, only 89 of more than 5,000 instructors were judged either “partially ineffective” or “ineffective.” It is not the process, it’s the principals doing the evaluating.
The Every Student Succeeds Act, among other things, intends to restore control over education to the states and schools. The bipartisan agreement was made possible by an alliance of liberal Democrats who kowtow to union pressure and campaign money and conservative Republicans who want as little government involvement as possible. Even the Obama administration has backed off its reform position.
As they say, politics can make for strange bedfellows. A Los Angeles Times editorial calls the new act “even more of a lie” than No Child Left Behind. That sums it up.
In a perfect world, put me down for favoring no federal involvement at all. But this is not a perfect world. Local school boards usually are no match for union money or election tactics.
We saw a good example of that during the recent board recall election in Jeffco. The so-called “grassroots movement” by citizens was 99 percent funded by unions. And teachers created an image of chaos by letting students leave classrooms during school hours to hold demonstrations.
So far, only two school districts in the state, Denver and Douglas County, have been able to stay on a course toward meaningful reforms.
And there is the problem of students who decline to even take state tests. Even if they were serving a purpose, anything less than full participation skews the results.
Here’s the way to end that: The Colorado Commission on Higher Education should rule that standardized tests are a mandatory part of the entrance application for a state college or university.
After all, if kids can’t take the “pressure” of the testing, they are likely not to make it in college.
Dick Hilker of Arvada (dhilker529@aol.com) is a retired Denver suburban newspaper editor and columnist. He writes twice a month for The Denver Post.
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