Fussing about the new ‘Unbridled Learning’ school accountability program (Revised)

The Lexington Herald-Leader chimed in on Friday about the state’s new “Unbridled Learning” school accountability program. The article has the potentially understated title, “New test scores could be a shock to Kentucky parents, educators say.”

As has been happening in news articles all around the state, the Herald-Leader discusses attempts from Frankfort to downplay the fact that scores for individual students may tumble – possibly all the way from “Distinguished” to “Apprentice” or even “Novice” – under the new system.

State educators are telling parents not to panic but to work with schools to boost their child’s performance. That’s nice advice, but for our older students, it’s going to be a tall order to undue years of education conducted to inadequately low standards.

Never the less, the pressure on schools and students to do more is worthwhile since we have to start somewhere, sometime. It doesn’t do a student or his parents any good to continue getting inflated scores from public schools only to be blindsided by the shock of needing non-credit remedial courses as soon as the student walks in the door to college. Students regularly got such unhappy news with our old, undemanding CATS assessments.

Still, some educators and their supporters, including some misguided legislators, are really unhappy that parents may finally get, as one reporter from Louisville puts it, “Honest” scores from the state testing system. Those same educators are unhappy that 70 percent of Kentucky’s schools automatically will be labeled as “Needs Improvement” this year.

These educators also engage in a little subterfuge, implying that 70 percent of the schools will get the same label next year and thereafter, as well. That’s not so. The cut scores developed for this year’s 70 percent level won’t change again for at least five years. If schools further improve next year, more than just 30 percent of them will meet expectations.

By the way, it is possible that even the 70th percentile level somewhat arbitrarily selected for satisfactory performance this year actually isn’t set high enough.

I ranked all of Kentucky’s 230 regular high schools for the percentage of their 11th grade students that met the math benchmark score in 2012 ACT testing that is required to avoid taking a remedial math course in Kentucky’s public postsecondary education system. It turns out that 193 schools didn’t even get half of their students to this performance level in math. In other words, at least 84 percent of our schools failed to adequately prepare even half of their students for credit bearing postsecondary education math courses. Looking at the situation in this way, the cut level for adequate Unbridled Learning performance in 2012 would have to be higher than the 84th percentile, not the 70th.

In any event, I am not impressed by teachers who fuss about the 70th percentile cut to determine adequate performance on Unbridled Learning in 2012. If anything, I fear this somewhat arbitrary level may have been set too low.

However, I do agree that something other than a percentile system will be needed in five years when Unbridled Learning scores are to be revisited.

More on this after the scores are released on Friday.(Revision removes confusing graph from ACT and associated discussion)