The Illinois State Board of Education proposed Wednesday that all 3rd- though 11th-grade public school students take standardized tests every year in reading, writing and math, which would make Illinois children among the most frequently tested in the nation.
The proposal was part of a sweeping package of testing reforms unveiled at a board meeting in Whittington, Ill., laying out a revamped, elaborate and expensive system for punishing and rewarding schools based on student test scores.
Most notably, the plan significantly lowers the bar for designating a failing school. In years past, schools were placed on an academic warning list if more than 50 percent of the students failed state tests two years in a row. Under the new plan, schools would be given an academic warning if 67 percent of students flunked.
The proposal was greeted with opposition from parents and experts who balk at giving up more classroom time for annual state testing and from legislators who bristle at the $129 million annual price tag–an 80 percent increase over the current funding level.
The state board is slated to vote on the proposal Thursday. If they approve it, board officials still need legislative approval. They plan to seek the OK next year and implement the reform package in 2002.
“I think the public will support this proposal if we can show folks that this [state testing system] has been an evolutionary process versus a revolutionary process,” said Lynn Haeffele, state deputy superintendent of schools who headed a task force that developed the proposal. “If people are convinced we are not just changing things for the sake of change and not pulling the rug out, they will support it.”
Officials would like to impose grade-by-grade testing as the authoritative measure of virtually all of the state’s 2 million students. The proposed expansion of the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests (ISAT) includes a plan to attach performance labels to all schools, whether high-achieving or poor-performing. The state would offer financial incentives for the first time for good results and educational assistance for hundreds of schools with failing scores, which in past years numbered only in double digits. .
All together, officials say, the package would provide a high level of accountability in public education.
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State officials said they hope local districts would eliminate their own standardized tests with the addition of the state’s proposed grade-by-grade tests, which would increase annual costs from $19 million to $40 million. A few districts, including Chicago, said they may consider the switch once the new state tests have been established.
Reacting to the proposal, some parents and educators said the state has gone overboard on standards and testing.
“This kind of testing is very stressful on children and difficult on families,” said Laura McAlpine, who has a 3rd grader enrolled at Newberry Math and Science Academy on Chicago’s North Side. “I feel like there’s enough testing going on in the schools. We should be focusing our time on building up a child’s reading and math skills.”
“You know there is going to be an outcry over it. Is it too much testing?” said state Sen. Lisa Madigan (D-Chicago), a member of the Senate Education Committee. “I’m fully in favor of intervention to make sure our kids learn how to read. I don’t know if you need to test that much to get it done.”
Experts said parents should be wary of schools indoctrinating kids to test taking.
“It’s far too much testing and it’s undoubtedly unnecessary,” said Monty Neill of Massachusetts-based FairTest, a critic of standardized testing. “It will lead to more teaching to the test in more grades because of its use as an accountability measure. I think the quality of education will decline in many schools because of too much testing and the pressure to look good on tests.”
State Supt. Glenn “Max” McGee defended his administration’s most sweeping initiative, which for the first time would reward high-performing and improving schools by redirecting $20 million in education grants to those schools. The state would increase spending on poor-performing schools from $4.3 million to $15 million.
“This proposal has the potential to help us identify–and most importantly support–school districts that need help in delivering an educational program that enables their students to meet and exceed state standards,” McGee said. “I like it because it has significant incentives for improvement and affords school districts the opportunity to feature special programs and receive recognition for quality programs.”
At the same time, however, the state board would be more lenient on identifying failing schools for the academic warning list and the more severe academic watch list–largely because hundreds of schools have failed the new, difficult exam, officials said.
In 1999, the test’s first year, one out of four schools failed. But by lowering the standard for the academic warning list, only about one out of 10 schools would be deemed eligible for the list, or 354 schools statewide. If the board didn’t lower the standard, 756 schools would be placed on academic warning.
Haeffele added that the state board still intends to intervene in all 756 schools and offer educational assistance–if it can secure the funding.
Ron Gidwitz, chairman of the State Board of Education, said the high number of schools failing the test necessitated changes in determining failing schools.
“We know how to remediate schools,” he said. “But we don’t have the resources to remediate 1,000 of them, and the legislators haven’t given [the resources] to us. Having 1,000 schools on a warning and watch list and not being able to adequately remediate them doesn’t make sense and would discredit the school designation system.”
There would be six designations for schools, which from best to worst are: exceeds standards, meets standards at high levels, meets standards, approaching/below standards, academic warning and academic watch.
The Chicago Public Schools make up the vast majority of the failing schools proposed under the new designation system: 25 of the state’s 29 schools proposed for academic watch and 240 of the 325 proposed for academic warning are in the city.