FLASHREPORT

TESTING THE CALIFORNIA STANDARDS TEST

An exclusive column penned by Vicki Murray, Ph.D. and Ian Randolph, both of the Pacific Research Institute.

With the release of the results of the California Standards Test (CST), many parents remain confident that the scores will confirm that their children’s schools are preparing them for future success. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, tell a very different story.

The CST measures grade-level proficiency in core subjects such as math and reading. Since the test's formulization in 2003, scores are increasing. There are growing discrepancies, however, between the percentages of students deemed proficient in math and reading on the CST since 2003 compared to NAEP, which has been administered to students nationwide since 1969.

On NAEP, the performance of California 4th and 8th graders has essentially flat-lined since 2003, averaging around one quarter of students scoring at or above proficiency in reading and math. In stark contrast, on the CST the percentage of 4th graders scoring at or above proficiency has increased nine percentile points in math and 14 percentile points in reading since 2003. Likewise, the percentage of 8th graders at or above proficiency has increased two percentile points in math and 11 percentile points in reading on the CST.


Those disparities should lead parents to question whether the CST is a reliable measure of actual student learning. If students do not perform well on NAEP exams, schools face no consequences. However, there is powerful pressure for student performance to improve on the CST because the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires 100-percent proficiency by the 2013-14 school year, or the state risks losing around $3 billion in annual federal funding. For all its noble intentions, this requirement introduces perverse incentives for states to water down their academic standards, lower passing scores, and inflate passing rates by letting students apply extra credit work to boost their test scores.

All this fudging misleads parents and misses the point of standards-based education, which is student learning.  Such quick-fixes also mask the need for fundamental, systemic improvement of the California public education system.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared 2008 “The Year of Education Reform,” and policy makers should certainly investigate these discrepancies in student test scores. At a minimum, parents should not take their children’s CST scores at face value. Moreover, no one should have to settle for a public education system in which, at best, half of all students score at grade-level proficiency in the basics such as math and reading.
 
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Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D., is senior policy fellow in Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, and Ian Randolph is the Pacific Research Institute Education Studies policy intern from Yale University.

You can contact Vicki and Ian, via the FR, here.