School district committees will try to figure out why a large gap exists in standardized test scores between different race and ethnic groups.
By: David Pescatore
HIGHTSTOWN Standardized testing has become an easy target in the wake of legislation such as the No Child Left Behind act of 2001.
It seems that students hate to take them. It seems that teachers bemoan giving them. And it seems that no one likes how the results are used.
Regardless of what one thinks of these tests, their results show a disturbing gap between the academic achievement of blacks (to use the state’s classification) and Hispanics compared to that of whites and Asians.
Love the tests or hate them, there must be a reason why the latter can pass them at least 30 percent more often than the former, as shown in the results of testing conducted last year by the East Windsor Regional School District. The district administered the Elementary School Proficiency Assessment to fourth-graders, the Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment, and the High School Proficiency Assessment was given in the 11th grade.
For example, in fourth grade, only 36.6 percent of black students passed the math portion of the ESPA, compared to 86.1 percent of white, 54.9 percent of Hispanic, and 77.4 percent of Asian students.
In the language arts portion, 85.6 percent of white students passed, compared to 61 percent of black, 72.9 percent of Hispanic, and 86.4 percent of Asian students.
The trend continued throughout the other levels of testing, with white and Asian students outscoring black and Hispanic students in every category.
Suzanne C. Harkness, East Windsor’s coordinator of evaluation, grants and community services, said, "I really don’t know why the gap exists. We have set up committees to answer that question."
Some say that the tests themselves are inherently unfair.
"For decades, critics have complained that many standardized tests are unfair because the questions require a set of knowledge and skills more likely to be possessed by children from a privileged background," wrote Alfie Kohn in a 2000 article in Education Week. Mr. Kohn is an author who writes on human behavior and education, and speaks at education conferences.
"This … provides a powerful advantage to students whose parents are affluent and well-educated," he added.
"Tests do not affect test scores," countered Gregory Camilli, professor of educational measurement and statistics at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education.
"Tests are messengers," he said. "The message is that kids without the opportunities of the upper-middle class do not do as well. They are a valuable messenger of opportunity."
Dr. Harkness said that since the tests are confidential, she had not been able to review the material in the test to know what kind of "outside knowledge" might be required.
Dr. Harkness said that this problem would only apply to reading sections of the tests. The rules of mathematics are more concrete. Two plus two equals four no matter your background. In the reading sections, some students may not relate to the content of a story, forcing them to work harder to comprehend the presented situations.
This problem is not easily rectified, according to Dr. Harkness.
"You can change the stories to relate more to urban areas, but then you start to lose the suburban students," she said.
What is clear is that economic status is a predictor of testing success. In the East Windsor school district, those classified as "Economically Disadvantaged" pass about 20 percent less often than their non-disadvantaged peers.
Ninety-six of the district’s 1,033 students are listed as economically disadvantaged. The state did not provide an ethnic breakdown of the students in this subgroup. Without these figures, it is impossible to know if the low performance within an ethnic group can be attributed to economic status.
Mr. Camilli explained that with poverty comes poor health care and troubled schools, all contributors to poor results.
Dr. Harkness said that the township has gotten more economically diverse over the past 10 years.
"You have $400,000 homes in the Centex development and people downtown on welfare," she said.
But, how much of a difference could this make within a single school district where students of varying ethnic and economic backgrounds sit next to each other and hear the same lessons, take the same tests?
"You have to look at the history, how each kid got into that classroom," Mr. Camilli said. "Maybe they have parents without some connection to education. They (the parents) may not be educated themselves."
When all other variables appear to be roughly equal, Mr. Camilli said that you have to look at the larger society and the expectations placed on various groups.
According to a 2003 study by the University of California at Berkeley, children become aware of how others view them between age 6 and 10.
"When children become aware of broadly-held stereotypes (about academic ability), under conditions resembling standardized testing conditions, children from academically stereotyped ethnic groups may become concerned that their test performance will be judged on the basis of a stereotype. This concern has a negative impact on performance," the study read.
According to the same study, high-stakes testing may be harmful to a large number of children by the second grade.
"The conditions of testing," the study concluded, "not ability, effort, motivation, cultural deficits, or personal failings, cause ethnic differences in performance."
And that effect is cumulative, according to Mr. Camilli, who said that by the eighth grade, students in some strata are four years behind with little chance of ever catching up.
But, how can we change a society’s expectations for a group? Like everything else in life, Mr. Camilli said that it comes down to money.
"Economic revitalization has to come first because poverty breeds a host of other problems," he said. "When poverty and crime decrease, the resulting social stability creates a fertile ground for educators to work hand-in-hand with families. Then, expectations start to change. Everybody starts to lose the ‘us-versus-them’ mentality."
The gap is large and the solutions, complex and difficult.
"If the answers were easy, some smart person would have discovered them 50 years ago. This discourages a lot of people," Mr. Camilli said. "It makes them question the very value of education. People become resigned to the horror and stay statistics. There is not one answer, either. Communities need to assess themselves and devise their own solutions."
There are some positive trends, though.
Dr. Harkness explained that the language barrier is a major roadblock for Hispanic students. She said that although only 15 of the district’s 1,033 students are classified as "Limited English Proficient," many more are just barely proficient.
Eight of the 15 limited English students are counted in the district’s 162-student Hispanic population. Five are listed as Asian and two are classified as white.
"Parent involvement is especially important with students who are learning English," Dr. Harkness said. "We have 360 adults in our night English as a Second Language classes, many of them parents of students. They need to learn English and they want to learn."
So everyone from parents and students to teachers, administrators and society needs an adjustment, but public school districts only have until 2014 to insure that 100 percent of their students pass these tests. What can be done?
Mr. Camilli said that there are three ways of dealing with this.
First, you can do what New Jersey is doing and divide the margin to be increased and chop it into equal portions, setting sub-goals throughout the 10-year span.
For example, in the fourth grade of the EWRSD, 68 percent of students passed the language arts literacy section of the ESPA. The district has set a target goal of 75 percent passing in 2005, 82 percent passing in 2008, 91 percent passing in 2011, and finally, 100 percent in 2014.
Second is the tact taken by many states, according to Mr. Camilli. The new law requires some, fairly subjective, "adequate yearly progress." Some states are setting small goals for the first nine years, followed by a massive leap to 100 percent in the final year. Mr. Camilli said that this "balloon payment strategy" is used in the hope that the legislation will not live to see 2014.
Finally, Mr. Camilli said that a state "could follow Texas’ method of lowering passing scores until everyone passes. Desperate schools will start bailing out of their current standards."
Dr. Harkness said that the 100 percent mark is not really feasible.
"We are not dealing with the same population year to year. Of course we can have better programs and better teachers, but every year there are children coming over from different countries with similar deficiencies," she said.
Children attending their first year of classes in a school district do not count towards the 100 percent requirement.
Mr. Kohn concludes his article by theorizing that even if students could reach 100 percent proficiency, it would not be good enough.
"Imagine that almost all the students in a given state met the standards and passed the tests," he wrote. "What would be the reaction from most politicians, business people, and pundits? Would they now concede that our public schools are now terrific or would they take this result as evidence that the standards were too low and the tests too easy? By definition, ‘high standards’ means standards that everyone won’t be able to meet."

