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Education
School Standards & Testing

With the implementation of the ABCs of Public Education, the Excellent Schools Act, charter school
legislation, and other reforms, North Carolina lawmakers have put education at the top of the priority list. But even after some recent progress, repeated problems with the state testing program and disappointing performance from our high school students suggest that more fundamental changes are needed.

Improvement — To Mediocrity

North Carolina’s end-of-grade and end-of-course tests, used as the basis for ABC bonuses and sanctions, put its schools in the best light. In 2003-04, 81 percent of students in grades 3 through 8 scored at grade level in reading and math, up from 53 percent in 1993. That’s a significant gain, in part reflecting the value of creating statewide tests and reporting the results. The ABC model offers a valuable structure within which to pursue reform.

Unfortunately, the state’s tests are flimsy guides to student achievement. State officials were embarrassed in 2001 to discover that their new math tests were absurdly easy to pass — a product of poor judgment and a flawed system of field testing. The problems go far beyond this one episode. To achieve “grade level” often means that students need not get even half the questions right, so they can expect to pass simply through educated guessing. Most questions on math tests do not involve computation. Spelling and grammar don’t count on most writing tests. And while both state tests and the well-respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) use four levels of achievement, the performance necessary to earn Level 3 on state tests is lower than the NAEP’s Level 2. In other words, North Carolina’s expectations are too low

A related concern is that state testing results don’t square with scores on independent national tests. For example, North Carolina’s own tests show a significant improvement in reading achievement since the mid- 1990s, but NAEP results show only a small gain for 4th-graders (from 30 percent proficient in 1994 to 33 percent in 2003) and a small decline for 8th-graders (from 31 percent in 1998 to 29 percent in 2003). Similarly, from 1993 to 2001 the state administered the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to a sample of 5th- and 8th-graders. The large upward trend on state tests was not mirrored in the Iowa Test results, which showed a more modest gain during the period (alarmingly, the state dropped the Iowa Test three years ago). On the other hand, North Carolina has clearly made significant progress in mathematics performance, rising in the NAEP testing from 21 percent (1996) to 41 percent (2003) among 4th-graders and from 20 percent to 32 percent among 8th-graders.

Despite some signs of improvement, our public schools still have a long way to go. According to the most recent NAEP tests, nearly 30 percent of 8th-graders lack basic reading and math skills, while 44 percent lack a basic knowledge of science. Furthermore, the final outcome of public education is measured in high-school performance, and it remains disappointing. North Carolina’s high-school graduation rate has been falling for years and is now only about 60 percent. Only 58 percent of 10th-graders passed the state’s comprehensive reading and math test. If our average performance is mediocre, the situation faced by our minority students can rightly be called a crisis. Among 8th-graders, more than half of black students and 45 percent of Hispanics lack basic math skills, while 44 percent of blacks and 48 percent of Hispanics lack basic reading skills.

Declining Productivity

The biggest challenge facing North Carolina public education is low productivity. What gains have occurred in recent years have come at great cost to taxpayers. Over the past decade, per-pupil spending grew by 56 percent, more than twice the rate of inflation, much of it to hire teachers and pay them more. In 2001-02, our public schools spent an average of more than $7,600 per pupil. But there is no merit pay for individual teachers, no real way for principals to hire and retain whom they wish, and little competitive pressure placed on the monopoly.

More money alone will not yield better results. Careful studies for the John Locke Foundation in 1997 and 1998, as well as those by other researchers, show no correlation between per-pupil spending and test scores. Moreover, North Carolina students improved their performance on state tests at roughly the same annual rate before (2.4 percentage points) and after (2.7 points) a variety of costly and far-reaching reforms were enacted in the 1996–97 period, including the ABC system of school-based bonuses, the statewide debut of the Smart Start preschool program, and a billion-dollar raise in teacher pay. At the 1993-96 rate of growth, the percentage of students considered “at grade level” would have risen to 79 percent in 2003–04 — only slightly below the 81 percent actually experienced. This calls into question the cost-effectiveness of many state school reforms.

It is also troubling that legislators have enacted so many education initiatives without carefully examining their purported justification. Teacher compensation in North Carolina, for example, exceeded the national average when properly measured (including benefits and adjusted for cost of living) long before the 1997 passage of a massive teacher-pay hike. Rather than devote some of the additional funds to true merit pay, lawmakers chose to offer large pay hikes for teachers receiving master’s degrees and national board certification — even though neither credential can be demonstrated to correlate with better outcomes for students.

Recommendations

1. The state’s end-of-year and end-of-course tests should be replaced with an independent, field-tested, and credible national test of student performance such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. North Carolina should also set an intermediate goal of at least half of students showing proficiency and 90 percent testing at the “basic” level as defined by reputable national tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
2. In addition to measuring, reporting, and rewarding overall growth in school test scores, the ABC system should reward individual teachers based on the value they add to the performance of their students.
3. State policymakers should deregulate and decentralize public schools while maintaining accountability for results by abolishing tenure and rigid certification rules, giving districts more flexibility in spending existing dollars, and lifting the cap on charters to allow more innovative public schools to be created across the state.

To view higher quality graphs, download Agenda 2004 [560KB Acrobat].