In December, state officials are expected to adopt revised Model Content Standards for elementary and secondary schools.  These standards would replace the original ones, which were adopted in 1995.  The current standards remodel is being heralded as thoughtful, inclusive, and relevant. Yet upgrading standards is the easy part. The success of the reform depends on how standards translate into assessment, instruction, and student learning. Unfortunately, the revised standards are unlikely to lead to improved student achievement. To understand why, we must look at the results of Colorado’s first effort at standards-driven reform.

Fourteen years after the original Model Content Standards were implemented, we know one thing for sure: most Colorado students are not meeting them. The proportions of 10^th graders performing proficient or above on the 2009 CSAP are not much higher (and in some cases they are lower) than they were when the tests were first administered all at once at the high school level, in 2001.

Percent of Colorado 10^th Graders Proficient and Advanced on CSAP: 2001 vs. 2009

Hidden in these results is the fact that low-income students’ performance on CSAP is miserably low, with only 35%, 19%, and 6% of 10^th grade Title I students scoring proficient or above in reading, writing, and math (respectively) in 2009. In all cases, these proportions are lower than in 2001. In spite of the crusading rhetoric at national and state levels, the standards-based reform initiated in the 1990’s has indeed left many children behind.

In some respects, the revised standards are an improvement over the originals. They are leaner, clearer, and grade-level specific. But while educators in Colorado may be getting better at formulating standards, there is no evidence that they are better able to teach to them. And it’s not for lack of effort. Teachers, school and district administrators, and policy makers have worked hard to turn the tide of low performance in Colorado. Their failure reflects not the magnitude of the effort so much as the magnitude of the challenge.

That so few Colorado students perform proficiently on CSAP is certainly a cause for concern. Yet even more alarming is the fact that many students who do perform proficiently are still not prepared for life after high school.   Over 50% of recent high school graduates who matriculate into two-year colleges and 20% who matriculate into four-year institutions require remediation in at least one subject (reading, writing, or math). Among the poor and students of color, the proportions are much higher. Research shows that remediation predicts college attainment: Each remedial course in which a student enrolls diminishes that student’s chance of completing an undergraduate degree.

Standards assessment should certify that a student who performs at grade level is prepared to meet the demands he or she will face after high school graduation. It is a betrayal of the promise of standards-driven reform that a student can perform “proficient” on CSAP and still need remediation in college.

Proponents of the new standards take seriously the charge to prepare students for their lives after graduating high school. For this reason, they have strived to create seamless articulation between high school and college.  The Colorado Department of Education created the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4K) to clarify what college- and workforce-readiness mean. The CAP4K committee has devised competencies that presumably will be built into the P-12 curriculum. But how will this committee’s work be reflected in the new or revised CSAP? What means will educators and test developers use to ensure that students who perform well on the test will be any better prepared for the workforce or college than they are now? Unless the new assessment measures knowledge and skills that are demonstrably linked to college- and workforce-readiness, the promise of standards reform—and schooling itself—will be empty.

State officials are poised to approve the revised standards before considering how the assessments tied to those standards will be designed. Two serious challenges await any effort to develop those assessments.

First, the revised standards include process-oriented competencies, such as how to access information and assess its credibility. While such competencies are certainly desirable, assessing them will be difficult. Tests that ask students to perform rather than just mark an answer to a direct question are much more expensive to create and score than the current CSAP. Thus, reformers face a choice: they can either develop a costly instrument to assess achievement of the new standards, or they can continue assessing content knowledge with CSAP and leave performance assessments to schools and districts. The former option would require a greater expenditure on student assessment than Coloradoans have ever before been willing to make. The latter option would greatly diminish state-level accountability—a linchpin of standards-driven reform. If the revised standards will not be assessed on CSAP, they become merely symbolic.

Second, as useful as process-oriented competencies may be, it has not been demonstrated that they are necessary in order to be successful after high school. Thus, even if the state makes the investment necessary to assess those competencies, a proficient score on the new assessment may not be any more reliable as an indicator of college- and workforce-readiness than the current CSAP.

In my view, the CSAP (in whatever form it takes) should be modeled on the ACCUPLACER®, the exam that community colleges use to determine whether students are prepared to succeed in college-level courses. The ACCUPLACER® is inexpensive to administer, untimed, and student-friendly. It can be taken multiple times in a year, and it provides immediate feedback as to whether a student is prepared to take for-credit college classes or is in need of remediation (The ACCUPLACER® in Colorado assesses three levels of remediation).  Most important, The ACCUPLACER® is extremely accurate in gauging a student’s ability to succeed in a for-credit college class.

New standards should not be adopted before the assessments are developed. Only when there is a demonstrated link between the standards and the assessments should the entire package be approved.  Furthermore, policy-makers should be able to prove to the public that any new standards lead unquestioningly to college- and workforce-readiness. Finally, the new standards should not be adopted unless they are accompanied by a well-articulated, evidence-based instructional program that, this time, can successfully get students to meet the standards.

I am aware that the measures I advocate would defeat the state’s ambitious timeline for implementing the new standards. Yet the first fourteen years of standards-based reform has taught us that creating standards does not necessarily result in improved student learning.  CSAP results confirm that the first attempt at standards-driven education in Colorado hasn’t worked.  How will the next fourteen years be different?

Gary Lichtenstein owns Quality Evaluation Designs, a firm specializing in education research, evaluation, and policy.  His book about Mapleton School District–Against the Odds: Insights from One School District’s Small School  Reform, co-authored by Larry Cuban and others—is scheduled for release by Harvard Education Press in early 2010. He can be reached via email at:  gary@QualityEvaluationDesigns.com.

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