Nearly two dozen major civil rights and disability advocacy groups have called on Congress to include multiple forms of assessment and multiple indicators of student progress in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.
In a letter to members of the Senate and House education committees, the groups, which include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Learning Disabilities Association of America, National Alliance of Black School Educators, National Alliance for Bilingual Education and others, stressed that if education is to improve in the United States, schools must be assessed in ways that produce high-quality learning and that create incentives to keep students in school.
The letter also said that a number of studies have found that an exclusive emphasis on primarily multiple-choice standardized test scores has narrowed the curriculum. It went on to say that an unintended consequence has been to create incentives for schools to boost scores by keeping or pushing low-scoring students out of school. Push-out incentives and the narrowed curriculum are especially severe for special needs students, English language learners and students without strong family supports, according to the groups.
Among the arguments made for including multiple measures:
• Attention will be given to a comprehensive academic program and a more complete array of learning outcomes;
• Higher-order thinking and performance skills can be assessed;
• Checks and balances will be added to ensure that emphasizing one measure does not come at the expense of other important educational goals; and
• Schools will be encouraged to attend to the progress of students at every point of the achievement spectrum, not just those near a test cut-point labeled “proficient.”
The letter also stated that a multiple-measures approach that incorporates a well-balanced set of indicators would support a shift toward holding states and localities accountable for making the systemic changes that improve student achievement, which is a necessary foundation for genuine accountability.
The Forum on Educational Accountability, a group formed to advance the proposals made in a joint organizational statement on NCLB signed by 138 national education, civil rights, religious, disability, parent, civic and labor groups, praised the letter.
“Clearly, there is an emerging consensus that judging our schools largely on the basis of simple-minded reading and math tests undermines educational quality and equity,” said FEA Chair Monty Neill, director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.
Two of the joint statement’s principles explicitly support the use of multiple measures:
• “Provide a comprehensive picture of students’ and schools’ performance by moving from an overwhelming reliance on standardized tests to using multiple indicators of student achievement in addition to these tests.”
• “Help states develop assessment systems that include district and school-based measures in order to provide better, more timely information about student learning.”
Members of ACSA’s NCLB Task Force will be studying the issue further and will discuss it during their next meeting, scheduled for Sept. 6 in Sacramento.
For more information, visit the FEA online at www.edaccountability.org.