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EdAction
Maple River Education Coalition PAC
105 Peavey Rd, St 116
Chaska, MN
55318
952-361-4931
http://www.EdAction.org
E-mail
May 15, 2001
Print Version
"Measuring Up" to Mediocrity
Commentary on Achieve, Inc.’s Report on the Minnesota
Comprehensive Assessments
by Michael J. Chapman
American Heritage Research
PO Box 1291
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Achieve, Inc., the "third-party" evaluator hired by the Department of Children Families and Learning (CFL) to assess Minnesota’s so-called high standards," has now issued its final report: Measuring Up; A Benchmarking Study of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.
Released at the end of April 2001, the report reveals the failure of Minnesota’s federally mandated education experiment! Earlier, in Aiming Higher, Achieve and the Council on Basic Education reported that their principle concern with the Profile of Learning content standards, was a "lack of quality and rigor."1 Now, Achieve concludes much the same about the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). The report states:
"Because the Profile of Learning standards are broad and general, the tests are unbalanced and skew [sic] toward low-level skills. A number of important objectives are not assessed."2 Furthermore, "The test’s level of rigor is a serious concern."3 (emphasis added)
Like Achieve’s earlier report, this report also contains many peculiar contradictions. On one hand it is highly critical, and on the other it commends the state and recommends further expansion. For example, following the above concern over low quality and rigor, Achieve reports that:
"...the state can build on its solid foundation to ensure that the tests provide high-quality information about student progress toward high standards."4
The lack of quality and rigor doesn’t sound like a "solid foundation" for "high standards" to me! Similar contradictions abound within this report. For example, note the low quality found in the math and reading assessments:
"In mathematics, very few of the items require students to show they understand the connections among two or more mathematical ideas...and require students to do only very simple activities. ...In reading, meanwhile, the grade 3 test has a preponderance of ‘superficial’ items, ... The grade 5 reading test as a whole tends to overemphasize lower-level skills at the expense of more challenging ones."5
That poor review is later followed by high praise:
"Moreover, the high quality of many of the test items, particularly the mathematics items and the well-chosen reading passages, demonstrates that Minnesota test-makers are skillful."6
Compare that high praise for the "well-chosen reading passages," with the reports conclusion five pages earlier:
"...passages contain misleading illustrations, awkward presentations and poor organization. ...our reviewers could offer specific suggestions for selecting exemplary reading passages."7
Which is it: "high quality and well chosen;" or "misleading, awkward, and poor?" The report continues: "...it is unclear to reviewers whether students, teachers, and test-makers are all operating with the same set of expectations."8 I heartily agree! But it seems the reviewers suffer from the same lack of consistency!
Achieve, Inc. is schizophrenic in its assessment precisely because it has little to work with, yet at the same time cannot lose sight of its mission to further this national education disaster! Achieve admits it was created by the same organization that gave us this mess in the first place; and it also admits the purpose of the MCAs is not to measure academic knowledge, but to hold states "accountable" to the national plan. According to the report:
"Since the early 1990s, 49 states have developed academic standards...and 48 are putting in place assessments to measure those standards. ...Born out of the 1996 National Education Summit, Achieve helps states ensure that they have in place standards that compare favorably with...expectations of other states and...nations and assessments that accurately measure student achievement against those standards."9
"...while they [MCAs] provide scores for individual students, they are intended to measure how well schools are implementing the Profile of Learning High Standards. In this way, the scores are not meant to be used for student accountability, but rather for system accountability."10
In other words, "accountability" means teachers, and schools are to be held accountable to the state, and all states are held accountable to the same internationally benchmarked standards!
This truth is illustrated by Achieve’s selection of Lauren Resnick to lead the analysis for Minnesota.11 Resnick, head of the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh, is also the co-director of the "New Standards Project" with Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). Together, they developed the federal standards for Bill Clinton.12 Notice that their project mission is identical to Achieve’s mentioned above:
"A joint project of the National Center on Education and the Economy and the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh, New Standards began in 1990 to create a system of internationally benchmarked standards for student performance and an assessment system that would measure student performance against the standards. Much of the system is in place."13
Unfortunately, "high performance standards" is double-speak for "minimum competencies." The National School-to-Work Office’s glossary of terms admits as much, defining "performance standards" as the "minimum acceptable level of achievement...that answers the question, 'how much is enough?'"14 Therefore, closing the "achievement gap" simply means focusing on the lowest common denominator. So, whether Bush knows it or not, under his education plan, "No Child Left Behind" really means all children will be held accountable to mediocrity! Sorry, but states will have no choice!
Tucker now sits on the National Skill Standards Board (NSSB) created in 1994 by Goals 2000. "The mission of the NSSB is to encourage the creation and adoption of a national system of skill standards... We seek not fifty separate state programs, but a system that serves all fifty states well."15
Minnesota is leading the implementation of this federal fiasco, thanks to lots of inside help from our new St. Paul School Superintendent, Patricia Harvey and her cheerleader Mayor Norm Coleman. Harvey’s last job was working for Marc Tucker at the NCEE overseeing the National Alliance for Restructuring Education, now called "America’s Choice." Coleman’s last job (before becoming Bush’s campaign chair for Minnesota), was serving on the re-elect Clinton and Wellstone committees in 1996. (Aren’t we just one big happy family!)
Still, Achieve’s fawning horror over the Profile and MCAs is another embarrassment for the CFL. Therefore, the commissioner withheld the report’s release until too little time remained in the legislative session for action. Bureaucrats, whose jobs depend upon keeping citizens and their representatives in the dark, know better than to reveal the truth at an inopportune time.
Minnesota’s elected representatives and the Bush team need to wake up! If we ever want to see excellence in education again, we need to restore local control and strip bureaucracies of the power to force states to implement a failed system that nobody wants!
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55318
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