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Eighth-grade tests are sharply harder to pass in most states than those in earlier grades (even after taking into account obvious differences in subject-matter complexity and children's academic development).
This is synchronicity.
I'd been telling Ed the other day that 8th grade tests are more difficult in general, but then couldn't find a source and thought I must have made the whole thing up.
Turns out I didn't.
4 comments:
In the forward to “The Proficiency Illusion” (2007), Finn and Petrilli claim standards-based education is in deep trouble foremost because “on the whole, states do a bad job of setting (and maintaining) the standards that matter most—those that define student proficiency for purposes of NCLB and states’ own results-based accountability systems.” No state enjoys the financial resources and technical expertise that is available to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for setting achievement level standards or “proficiency cut scores.” Not one state. Federal law requires that NAEP use achievement levels only on a trial basis until the Commissioner of Education Statistics determines that the achievement levels are “reasonable, valid, and informative to the public.” Not there yet! NAEP still uses achievement level scores on a trial basis and urges strong caution in their use and interpretation. This is true even with the just released NAEP 2007 achievement level results for reading and mathematics. It seems a bit unreasonable and unfair to castigate any state’s performance on a complex task that even the national assessment has not yet fully mastered.
For more see http://www.bdsphd.zoomshare.com
"It seems a bit unreasonable and unfair to castigate any state’s performance on a complex task that even the national assessment has not yet fully mastered."
Teachers give tests and grade them all of the time. Schools pass or fail kids based on these scores. Testing and grading is not complex. Setting cutoffs requires judgment, but it's not complex.
Eighth grade tests are more difficult because K-6 schools are in educational fairyland. Look at the fourth grade tests. We talked before about nonlinear educational jumps or cliffs before. Middle school is where schools have to "get real" and get the the kids ready for high school.
Actually, I think the politics are a bit different, but I'm not going to be able to cite a source for this.
I read once (where?) that states make their 8th grade tests difficult because, politically speaking, they can. The tests are low stakes by definition, meaning no student is going to be denied a diploma because he failed.
Thus a low score on an 8th grade test serves as a wake-up call to the student, the family, and the high school.
Here in Illinois the 8th grade ISAT doesn't seem terribly difficult.
Here is a collection of sample questions:
http://www.isbe.net/assessment/pdfs/2007_ISAT_Sample_Book_Gr_8_m.pdf
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