This is a letter to refute comments made by Sen. Val Stevens’ Aug. 13 op-ed article on school reform (“States can get schools back on track, not feds”).
She quoted stagnant test scores on the Iowa Basic Skills test as proof that our local students are not succeeding. Average test scores, Sen. Stevens reported, have “hovered in the 50th percentile with little to no improvement over previous years.” But what does this mean? A score in the 50th percentile means that the average local student has done the same on this year’s test as the average student from across the nation.
The problem with this test, and other percentile-based tests like it, it that it does not report on how well a student does, but only on how well he or she does compared to other students of the same year. All that this test tells us is that we have the amount of achievement you would expect from the average school in the average year: average. If every school across the nation was filled with tomorrow’s geniuses, then every school would still rank around the 50th percentile. If not a single student nationwide knew how to read they could all still rank in the 50th percentile.
Hovering scores in the 50th percentile do not tell us that our schools are not improving; they could be telling us that everyone else is improving too.
We should figure out what the test scores really mean, if they mean anything at all, before we condemn our schools, and then our students too.
I propose that many educational critics are reading too much in these test results. These tests aren’t about falling through cracks or getting overlooked. They don’t say that our schools are failing our students; they simply say that our students are just as good at filling in the right bubble or writing a paragraph as everybody else.
Snohomish
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