No final exams? Middle schoolers get loophole
For as long as students have had to take state assessment tests, middle school students have been bombing on them.
Even students who scored well in elementary school and those who go on to ace the high school Regents exams tend to get caught in the middle school slump.
Locally, a growing number of school administrators think they have come up with a solution: bribery.
Some schools base final exam grades on students’ scores on the state assessments. Others exempt students who score a 3 or 4 on a state test—on a scale of 1 to 4—from having to take the final exam in a subject.
For students at Hamburg Middle School, that means not having to come to school on exam day.
“Telling an eighth-grader you get an extra day off is a pretty good motivator,” said Gregg J. Davis, assistant superintendent of information services in the Hamburg School District.
“I’ve seen the scores go up, so there’s a lot of positives in that. Three years ago, I think our eighth-grade scores were in the 60s. Now they’re in the 80s,” he said of the percentage of students scoring at proficiency. “That’s a pretty good leap.”
Other schools offer equally glowing reports about their students’ improvements.
But some experts say the results don’t justify using student scores in a way the state never intended.
“The state assessments were designed to gauge student progress toward the [state learning] standards, not as individual student achievement measures,” said Ann K. Lupo, an assessment consultant to the state Education Department who teaches at Buffalo State College.
“The assessments are being debased if used in this fashion, contrary to their intent. The English language arts test is given in January, and the math test is in March — not at the end of the year, on purpose, to discourage using them as finals.”
A spokesman for the state Education Department said it’s up to local schools to decide how to determine course grades.
Local school officials acknowledge that they’re using the state tests in a way that was never intended.
But by the time students reach eighth grade, the educators say, they’ve realized that there’s not much of a consequence for them if they get a low score on the state assessments. Generally, the worst that happens is that students with low scores are assigned extra help in whatever subjects they’re struggling with.
For schools, teachers and administrators, though, low scores can mean much more. If enough students do poorly on a test, a school can find itself on one of the state’s warning lists, a designation that can haunt a school for years.
Educators complain that the media have contributed to the situation by publishing scores released by the state Education Department and comparing schools, based on the percentage of students who pass each test.
“A lot of the fiddling around with how to use scores, and creating incentives for students to do well, is pure politics,” Lupo said. “Districts are very, very concerned not only about student performance, but how they will be perceived when the scores hit the paper.”
One of the highest-ranking education officials in the area noted that many districts complain about the effect of standardized testing, yet some are using those tests as final exams.
“We can’t criticize that the richness of the curriculum is lost because of the narrowness of those state tests, then turn around and use those tests as a final exam,” said Donald A. Ogilvie, superintendent of Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services. “We’re communicating that, despite what we may say, the real focus is that state test.”
The incentives that schools offer for boosting student scores generally center on eighth grade, long a focus of the state Education Department, although some schools have extended their incentives to sixth-and seventh-graders.
Some districts, such as Williamsville, use eighth-graders’ scores on state science and social studies tests as their final exam grade. The district grades the individual tests on a 100- point scale.
Both tests are close to the end of the school year, with the science test in May and social studies in June.
“We really don’t see that it would be that much more valuable to give another exam a few weeks later,” said Linda L. Cimusz, Williamsville’s assistant superintendent for instruction. Plus, “it saves time in the sense that we don’t have to write a new exam every year in those areas.”
Williamsville does not use the state English or math test scores as final exam grades, though, she said, because those state tests are given in January and March, respectively.
“There’s still a great deal of curriculum content that has not been taught or learned at that point in time,” she said. “It’s a good marker of content, . . . but it could never be counted as a final exam.”
Likewise, West Seneca uses only the eighth-grade social studies test, given in June, as a final exam grade, on a scale of 100, because it is given so close to the end of the school year.
That district has been trying to educate students about the state’s measures of success, called “performance indicators,” so that students can recognize for themselves whether they’re doing well. That takes the emphasis off a number as a grade and onto the substance of what students know or still need to learn, said Brandon L. Wiley, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction.
“While giving them a break from not taking a final is a feel-good thing, I don’t know that it gets to the crux of the issue — how do I help you improve your knowledge base and your skills?” he said. “As a district, we don’t believe grades motivate students. We have to find other ways to motivate students.”
Some schools also count scores on English and math state tests as final exam grades.
Eden, for example, for the first time this year is letting its seventh-and eighth-graders count their score on the state tests as their final exam grade if they want to in math and English. Eighth-graders also take state tests in social studies and science, and can do the same, officials said. A 4 on the state test equates to a 95, while a 3 works out to a 90, according to the scoring system.
“The motivation factor is huge,” said Debbie Biastre, director of curriculum in Eden.
A Niagara County district, Barker, exempts eighth-graders from the final exam in any of the four subjects if they get a 3 or 4 on the state test. But students also must average 90 or more in all four marking periods. “We want kids to take the state assessments seriously,” Superintendent Roger J. Klatt said, “but . . . it is that demonstration of mastery throughout the year that drives the exemption, rather than a reliance on the state assessments.”
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