A new proposal in the state legislature would dramatically change
Supporters said the change would better prepare
Colorado schoolchildren for college and for life after school."The Senate took a historic step today in improving, modernizing and strengthening student assessments," said Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction.
The move means state grade-level standards will be set so that each year students move closer to comprehending the issues presented on ACT tests. …
The change came during floor debate Thursday morning over Senate Bill 212, which requires that the state align K-12 educational standards with college requirements so that students can make a seamless transition. But the bill did not specify what the standards should be and laid out a multi-year collaborative process for state education officials to develop the standards.
The bill seems to have split some education advocacy organizations that are frequently aligned, such as the Colorado Education Association and the Colorado Association of School Executives (pro), and the Colorado Department of Education and Colorado Association of School Boards (against). Support for the bill also does not fall along party lines, with sponsors on both sides of the aisle.
At the heart of the issue is the effectiveness of the CSAP in assessing student progress towards grade-level and graduation standards. Unfortunately, the CSAP is often unfairly maligned in these discussions, a victim of Governor Owens’ haphazard accountability policymaking. This bill is meant to fix real flaws with CSAP testing, especially the fact that CSAP results are not useful to teachers in improving instruction for students, because results arrive late and at a high level of aggregation.
Rather than dump the CSAP altogether, though, CSAP testing could be modified to address this and other concerns. For example, a computer-adaptive test, while it would come with significant technical challenges, could provide both diagnostic and summative performance information with less burden on classroom time.
Supporters of this bill mean well (I assume), but it’s too early to the CSAP baby out with the bathwater.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Hey Captain…you go brother! I must say I am totally confused and puzzled by the disconnects between the rhetoric regarding the promotion of CAP4K (revolutionary, leading edge, moving away from seat time to proficiency, etc) and this amendment which would drop high school CSAP and replace it with ACT’s EPAS assessments.
I’m wondering what the bill’s sponsors are thinking. I know that most of them really do want to increase the rigor and quality of Colorado’s high schools but I concerned this will move us backwards. Here is my short list of ELEVEN reasons why I think this is a very bad idea. I’m very interested in what others are thinking about this “landmark legislation” and the reasons why we should support the change to EPAS. I don’t get it.
Van’s ELEVN reasons why the replacing CSAP with EPAS is a really bad idea-
1. EPAS is a less comprehensive test than CSAP, it does not include any real writing (it’s all multiple choice!). Writing is one of the best indicators of success in college.
2. If policy makers want to have P-20 system that is tied to standards and an assessment system based on proficiency, the assessment system in high school will need to be much more comprehensive (and expensive) than CSAP, ACT or any other current standard American option. CO will need tests that are more like the AP, IB, PISA or Cambridge assessments if the state is serious about a system based on proficiency.
3. CO will be looking at the standards in 08…assessment should follow standard development…this legislation puts the cart before the horse.
4. The state legislators and lobbyists should not be deciding what tests should be used, testing experts should be charged with making these decisions as is the case with NAEP, our national test.
5. Dropping CSAP will not allow us to look at longitudinal growth of individual students into high school. This is the gold standard for assessing students, schools and school systems. CO should not throw this good work out so quickly.
6. We do not know if 10th grade CSAP, EPAS or any other assessment is a good predictor of college success (we could find out but it will take someone doing a study).
7. This change seems to automatically give ACT a very large state contract (is this good public policy?)
8. CSAP has problems (feedback loop way too long and kids not bought into relevance), shouldn’t we try to fix these before jumping to another assessment that may have similar problems and more?
9. The EPAS system pushes high schools to be orientated towards Carnegie Units, is this the kind of improvement CO wants? It seems that Cap4K was meant to move towards a system based on proficiency, not seat time.
10. The Feds are not likely to approve EPAS without major modifications….does it make sense to jump into this knowing that the Feds are likely to increase high school accountability (others should know more about the costs and challenges involved in making these tests work for DC).
11. Moving forward with EPAS will set CO backwards relative to other states. The Fordham foundation seems misinformed about these changes.
I applaud those who are taking action to build P-16 or P-20 (pre-school through college) curriculum. College is not essential for all, but college readiness is. Research is clear that quality of life as an adult depends upon post-secondary education (whether vocational or academic). Our system currently does not link P-12 with college, so that huge numbers of students plummet into the gap between 12th and 13th grades. When students who do what they have been told–they stay in school, they get good grades, and they are designated as “proficient” on CSAP–then are placed in remedial courses in college or find they can’t compete in for-credit courses–they’ve been ripped off. For them, the promise of schooling has been bankrupt. Equity in education demands that we link high school achievement with college readiness.
The promoters of the proposal are right headed, but they misunderstand ACT. ACT is a college entrance exam, but it is NOT linked to a college curriculum. CSAP also is not linked to college curricula. The only standardized assessment that I am aware of that IS expressly linked to college curricula is the ACCUPLACER. This test is given to students who apply to community college and it determines whether they will be eligible to take for-credit courses, or whether they will be placed in remedial courses. The test is used across the country–it’s proven. It is tailored by state, so that in Colorado, for example, the test diagnoses 3 levels of remediation (which is offered at Colorado’s community colleges), whereas in New Mexico, for example, the test diagnoses 6 levels of remediation.
The test is inexpensive, easy to administer, user-friendly (in the sense that it can be done in an hour or two and doesn’t brutalize students by giving them lots of questions they can’t answer), and can be taken multiple times in a year. Students should take this test every year in high school. CSAP means nothing to students, because it doesn’t assess students, it assesses schools, and they know it. ACT assesses students, but the scores are artificial in the sense that they suggest whether you might be admitted into college, but don’t suggest how you might do. ACT is expensive and brutalizing, and probably not appropriate for most freshmen and sophomores. ACCUPLACER is a test that tells you whether you are prepared to succeed as a freshman in college level courses. Put another way, this test tells you whether, if you pay for a year’s worth of college, you are likely to earn any credit for that year. That means something to kids and to parents.
As someone who spends a lot of his time dealing with assessment issues, I am sympathetic to Van’s concern that abandoning CSAP will impede our ability to assess longitudinal improvement of schools. Yet, as Van points out, we can’t say that CSAP assesses college readiness. CSAP does not measure student growth, either. CSAP measures school performance by looking at combined scores of all kids in various grades in each school. So who exactly is CSAP serving? I believe that it’s serving policy makers and, educators, maybe. It does not serve kids. Preserving the test simply because it provides a consistent metric is sort of like determining whether your child has grown by continuing to dress him in the same clothes year after year: sure, you can determine change, but it’s not doing very much good for the kid.
This proposal is not simply about re-thinking assessment. First and foremost it’s about building continuity into our education system, so that students who complete high school are indeed college ready. Until we build such continuity into our school system, the promise of schooling for many–especially the urban poor–is empty.
Gary, why do you say that CSAP does not measure individual student growth? I think it is one of the only assessment tools that can measure student and school growth on reading, writing and math in grades 3-10 for every CO student. This is a very powerful tool that could help answer a whole host of questions. For instance, we could see if 10th grade CSAP is a good or bad indicator of college success. These new data will be rolled out when the 08 CSAP results are reported this August. Have you seen the new DPS performance framework which uses some of the this data? It is very helpful.
Van, good question. It’s important for people to understand that CSAP was not designed as a diagnostic test for students. It’s accurate as a diagnostic tool only for schools. It’s not accurate for a specific student, because the range of error is too great. It’s like measuring the temperature of a lake using a thermometer that is calibrated in 5 or 10 degree increments. If you take several readings from all around the lake and combine them, you can get a good reading of the lake temperature overall, but you can’t get an accurate reading of the lake at any one point. A student’s score on CSAP is an estimate that is not considered reliable for diagnosis–meaning that if the student took the same test again within a similar time period, the score could vary widely. If you take a whole bunch of “readings” from students in a school, you can get a good diagnosis of grade level or overall school performance, but, again, not good information about any one student. This is why you can’t really take a student’s score one year and compare it to his or her score the next–unless the difference is dramatic, the information you get is so unreliable you can’t interpret it accurately. This is not the case with tests like IOWA Test of Basic Skills, MAP, or ACT, which are much more expensive and precise tests. This is the reason that when CSAP was created it was not legal to use for placement purposes.
I understand your argument but I am not convinced that ITBS, MAP or the other are a more precise instrument when it comes to reading or writing for a particular student. I’d like a second or third opinion….any other testing experts want to comment? The psychometrics and statistics involved here are above my knowledge level.
Does anyone know what the rationale was for mandating that all Colorado 11th graders take the ACT exam?