Welcome
The recent debate about the quality and necessity of North Carolina’s testing program is long overdue. Let’s jump in with both feet, shall we?
Bulletin Board
- The Federalist Society will hold their bimonthly Law & Public Policy Luncheon on Thursday, March 10, at 12 noon at the John Locke Foundation office in Raleigh. Daren Bakst and Philip Romohr will highlight the findings of the John Locke Foundation’s new annual Supreme Court Review that is designed to inform citizens, in an accessible manner, about the decisions, voting patterns, and implications of cases recently brought before the North Carolina Supreme Court. The cost is $10.00 per person. For more information or to sign up for the event, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
- The John Locke Foundation is sponsoring a Citizen’s Constitutional Workshop on Saturday, March 19 from 11:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Lord Auditorium/Pack Memorial Library in Asheville, NC. Historian Dr. Troy Kickler and political science expert Dr. Michael Sanera will discuss "What the Founders and the State Ratification Conventions Can Teach Us Today." The cost is $5.00 per participant, lunch included. Pre-registration is strongly suggested. For more information or to sign up for the event, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
- The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/edu_corner for further information.
- Become a member of JLF’s Freedom Clubs! We have seven regional clubs covering every part of North Carolina, so there is one near you and your like-minded conservative friends. For more information, visit https://www.johnlocke.org/support.
- You will find wisdom, knowledge, and purpose at our research newsletter archive.
CommenTerry
On February 21, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning wrote to members of the General Assembly to discourage them from approving House Bill 48, a bipartisan measure that would eliminate standardized tests not required by the federal government. According to Judge Manning, the elimination of these tests would violate North Carolina’s constitutional guarantee of a sound basic education under the well-known Leandro decision, which Manning oversees. He warned, "EOC [End-of-Course] testing in those and other core Leandro subjects is constitutionally mandated as part of the accountability process and therefore, not subject to elimination by House Bill 48 or other legislative action."
Despite Manning’s letter, the bill easily passed a House vote last week week. It is not clear how the Senate will respond to Manning’s counsel, but I expect the Senate vote to be much less decisive. And if the bill makes it to Governor Perdue’s desk, there is no guarantee that she would sign it.
Amidst the legislative and political uncertainty of House Bill 48, there are serious problems associated with using the current state testing program, known as the ABCs of Public Education, to monitor the state’s compliance with the Leandro decision.
Eliminating tests is nothing new. Over the years, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has eliminated several end-of-grade and end-of-course tests in core subjects. Three tests were eliminated for the 2001-2002 school year: Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Open-ended Assessments in grades four and eight, and the High School Comprehensive Tests in Reading and Mathematics at grade 10.
A decade later, DPI eliminated five tests to comply with Senate Bill 202/S.L. 2009-451. State officials discarded the Grade 3 Pretests of Reading Comprehension and Mathematics, the Computer Skills test, the Chemistry End-of-Course test, the Physics End-of-Course test, Competency Tests of Reading and Mathematics, High School Comprehensive Test of Mathematics, and the NC Checklist of Academic Standards (NCCLAS). This year, high school students will no longer be required to take the Geometry End-of-Course test. The State Board of Education voted unanimously to eliminate the geometry test last year.
The fact that Manning did not object to eliminating the tests mentioned above suggests that there are some inconsistencies in the way he applies Leandro to state testing. For example, it is not clear why physics, chemistry, and geometry tests are not subject to the Leandro mandate. After all, the mandate requires all public school students to obtain a sufficient knowledge of fundamental math, science, English, and history. In addition, the Leandro mandate does not appear to apply to elementary and middle school science and social studies. The state does not administer a test in either area. To my knowledge, Manning does not see the state’s failure to test science and social studies at these levels as a constitutional violation.
A further concern is the quality of state tests. How well do North Carolina’s End-of-Grade and End-of-Course tests measure student performance? If the tests were reliable and consistent measures of knowledge and skills, then they may serve as a sound instrument for determining whether the state’s public schools have met the Leandro mandate. According to a number of experts, the state testing programs is defective, and results say little about what students have learned.
In their 2008 final report, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Testing and Accountability pointed out that the University of North Carolina system "afforded no value to the EOC tests as admission is being considered and likewise the community college system uses its own system rather than EOC tests for placement decisions" (p. 5). The 32 members of the commission also complained that the tests failed to live up to the promise of increasing graduation rates and reducing remediation rates at post-secondary institutions.
It is not hard to understand why the university system and others have little faith in state tests. Between February and April 2010, the John Locke Foundation asked over 500 college and university faculty to evaluate selected test questions from North Carolina’s 2008-2009 end-of-course high school civics and economics and U.S. history tests. The study, creatively titled A Survey of End-of-Course Test Questions, provided an overview of the responses from mailed and online surveys.
The results of the survey substantiated complaints from public school teachers who pointed out that even a few poorly constructed test questions undermine months of classroom instruction and weeks of test preparation. For students, well reasoned but incorrect answers to a handful of test questions can be the difference between meeting and not meeting state proficiency standards.
If a statewide testing program is constitutionally mandated, then we need an alternative to the tests written and administered by the Department of Public Instruction. Most members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Testing and Accountability believed that the state should adopt nationally normed reference tests. I agree that a repeal and replace strategy is a sensible solution to North Carolina’s testing farce.
Random Thought
One of my favorite songs is "Robots" by Dan Mangan. You cannot go wrong with such lyrics as, "Robots need love too; they want to be loved by you."
Facts and Stats
According to the "North Carolina Testing Program: Multiple Choice Test Development Process Flow Chart," the four-year process of creating and implementing a testing instrument includes the following 22 steps:
- Develop Test Specifications (Blueprint)
- Develop Test Items
- Review Items for Tryouts
- Assemble Item Tryout Forms
- Review Item Tryout Forms
- Administer Item Tryouts
- Review Item Tryout Statistics
- Develop New Items
- Review Items for Field Test
- Assemble Field Test Forms
- Review Field Test Forms
- Administer Field Tests
- Review Field Test Statistics
- Conduct Bias Reviews
- Assemble Equivalent and Parallel Forms
- Review Assembled Tests
- Final Review of Tests
- Administer Test as Pilot
- Score Tests
- Establish Standards
- Administer Tests as Fully Operational
- Report Test Results
Mailbag
I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].
Education Acronym of the Week
OTISS — Online Testing Irregularity Submission System
Quote of the Week
"We know that the ABCs have resulted in our schools making significant academic strides."
— Philip Kirk, chairman of the State Board of Education, and Mike Ward, superintendent of iublic instruction, Triangle Business Journal, September 24, 1999
Click here for the Education Update archive.
