Compass Point
A Weekly Collection of Data, Articles and Insights from the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute
A project of the Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for Public Policy
L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
CEPI in the News









Education Editorial: SOLs and student performance
NBC 12 (WWBT)
September 7, 2014

"When single digit scores persist . . . adults should feel the consequences.  Failing schools are not about little people."

Henrico's Steward School hit with $475,000 lawsuit
NBC 12 (WWBT)
(September 3, 2014)

Mother arrested after kids rack up over 50 school absences each
CBS 6 (WTVR)
(September 3, 2014)
Articles of Interest
State & Local Policy

Changing SOL’s and student assessments: VA Board of Education head in Bedford tonight to listen
WFIR News Talk Radio
September 8, 2014


Work is now under way to revise the way Virginia assesses student achievement, moving away from total reliance on state SOL’s. And the State Board of Education President is in Bedford tonight to hear suggestions as part of a statewide listening tour. The meeting starts at 6:00 pm at Bedford Elementary School. WFIR’s Evan Jones reports.

Pogge Named to Virginia Commission on Civics Education

Williamsburg Yorktown Daily
September 7, 2014

Del. Brenda Pogge (R-96) has been appointed to serve on the Virginia Commission on Civics Education, a group tasked with educating students on the importance of citizen involvement in government.

The commission also encourages citizens to study local and state government and works to bring together organizations that conduct civics education.

“I believe strongly in the importance of an engaged and well-educated electorate,” Pogge said in a news release announcing the appointment. “Our Founding Fathers repeatedly noted that the preservation of freedom and the strength of our nation require a steadfast commitment to education. By promoting programs and educational initiatives that facilitate civics awareness, the Commission on Civics Education plays an active role in accomplishing this objective.”

Federal Policy

Rating teachers not as easy as 1, 2, 3
Politico
September 1, 2014


The idea seems simple enough: Identify the best teachers and reward them. Pinpoint the worst and fire them.

That’s been a linchpin of the Obama administration’s education agenda from the start.

But now the administration’s initiative is in disarray, with states scaling back, slowing down and, in some cases, putting off tough decisions until Obama is out of office.

Teachers union pressure, error-riddled evaluations and a wave of more difficult tests for students have won many teachers a reprieve from the newfangled evaluations during the school year now getting underway.

Why Don’t More Men Go Into Teaching?
The New York Times
September 6, 2014

AS Tommie Leaders, 22, approached college graduation last spring, his professors told him he would have no trouble getting hired. “You’re a guy teaching elementary, ” they said.

Mr. Leaders, who earned his education degree from the University of Nebraska in June, started teaching fifth grade last month in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He is the only male teacher in the building.

Across the country, teaching is an overwhelmingly female profession, and in fact has become more so over time. More than three-quarters of all teachers in kindergarten through high school are women, according to Education Department data, up from about two-thirds three decades ago. The disparity is most pronounced in elementary and middle schools, where more than 80 percent of teachers are women.

Educators, advocates and lawmakers fight bitterly about tenure, academic standards and the prevalence of testing, but one thing most sides tend to agree on is the importance of raising the status of teaching so the profession will attract the best candidates.
We give tests because _______.

As another school year starts, no doubt more than one teacher will be heard to utter the words "Listen up, you'll need to know this for the test."  Tests, as all students know, are a focal point for, and an accepted part of, education.  As Dr. Bosher notes in his weekly editorial on SOL's and student performance, while there is a healthy debate about the number and nature of tests, few people advocate for eliminating all tests in the educational system.  Perhaps even fewer suggest that tests are so much fun that we should make students take them just for their own sakes. 

. . . they measure achievement?
Dr. Bosher argues that the intent of tests is to measure the progress of individuals and school systems in order to improve achievement.  He cites former Lt. Gov. Don Beyer as saying, "I cannot manage what I cannot measure." And he notes that failing schools are not about the actions of little people but of the adults. 

Whether the increased use of standardized tests to benchmark achievement has, in fact, improved student perfomance is the subject of significant debate among experts and the general public.  For a range of opinions, pro and con, check out this compilation from ProCon.org, including at least one expert who has switched her opinion over time.  Our poll snapshot this week looks at the divergent perspectives of Virginians on the impact of the SOLs - with majorities seeing both pros and cons to the testing regime.   Keeping with this theme, we also excerpt a run down of successful testing education-related legislation from the 2014 General Assembly session from our final General Assembly Update of 2014, originally shared back in May.

. . . they measure whether students are learning important skills?
A relevant question in finding an ideal role for testing is what they actually measure.  What, at first, could seem straightforward can become more complex once we start to unpack what we mean by achievement.  Is it a collection of facts?  Or is acheivement the mastery of a skill set?

If it's the latter, another relevant question is whether current standardized tests measure those skill sets.  This question is part of the motivation between changes in recent years to include writing in some standardized tests, rather than all multiple choice questions.  But some research, like a study from MIT, Harvard and Brown, suggests there may be little correlation between improved test scores and problem-solving skills, or what the researchers term "fluid intelligence."

. . . they help students learn?
This last possibility is explored in considerable depth in a New York Times Magazine article published this past weekend.  Titled "Why flunking exams is actually a good thing," the article reviews recent research and education theory that suggests that tests, taken before the teacher guides students through content, can significantly prime our minds to receive and retain that information, even if we flunk the exam badly. 

Sincerely,
CEPI
Poll Snapshot:  Opinion on the SOLs
In Virginia we have long had the SOLs, standards that many believe are equally rigorous or exceed those proposed under the Common Core. To promote accountability to the SOLs, a system of testing was implemented. Current debates include whether such tests help or hurt student learning as well as whether test scores of students should be leveraged in conducting teacher evaluations (for example, DC recently announced a pause in using test scores for evaluation).

In responding to our most recent poll, Virginians were split on whether SOLs have helped (23%), hurt (35%) or made no difference (33%) on student performance. Those who were closer to schools (parents and school employees) were each more likely than non-involved persons to see the SOLs as making no difference. 42% of parents felt that way compared to 32% of non-parents while 52% of school employees or retirees felt the SOLs made no difference (compared to 32% of the general public.)

Perhaps interesting given the ongoing debate is that the percentage of respondents overall who felt that the SOLs helped student performance was down 11 points from when the question was previously asked in 2008.
























Alongside the mixed opinion over whether the SOL's improve student performance, there are also majorities who see costs to the SOLs, specifically in the area of time spent preparing and the stress the tests put on students. 


























There are also majorities who strongly or somewhat agree that there have been benefits to the SOL testing regime in terms of equality of education standards across different school systems and in keeping the school systems accountable for their performance.



(To read the full results of the poll, visit our website. Questions 10 and 11 focus on the impact of SOL's - topline results are on pages 30-31; crosstabs are on pages 50-55.)

Successful Testing Legislation 2014
Excerpted from CEPI's General Assembly Update

"Accountability

HB 886 (Peace) requires the State Council of Higher Education (SCHEV) to provide high schools and institutions of higher education a link on its website to published data, to the extent available, assessing rates of enrollment in remedial coursework, individual student credit accumulation and postsecondary degree completion rates. Local school boards are required to post an annual notice to high school students and their parents of the availability of such data on their websites.

HB 930 (Greason) and SB 306 (Deeds) stipulate that Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments administered in grades three through eight not exceed (a) reading and mathematics in grades three and four; (b) reading, mathematics and science in grade five; (c) reading and mathematics in grades six and seven; (d) reading, writing, mathematics and science in grade eight; and (e) Virginia Studies and Civics and Economics once each at the grade levels deemed appropriate by each local school board. Each school board shall annually certify that it has provided instruction and administered an alternative assessment, consistent with Board of Education (BOE) guidelines, to students in SOL subject areas in which an SOL test was not administered. The bills also include provisions for an SOL Innovation Committee, consisting of legislators and education stakeholders, to periodically make recommendations to the BOE and General Assembly on the SOL tests; student growth measures; alignment between the SOL, assessments and the School Performance Report Card; and ideas on innovative classroom teaching.

HB 1229 (Landes) and SB 324 (Miller) delay, for two years, implementation of the A to F grading system for reporting individual school performance, slated to be in place this October pursuant to legislation adopted in 2013. The bills call for the BOE to develop, in conjunction with the House and Senate Education Committees, a plan for the school performance grading system that considers various factors and indicators. Public input on the plan would occur in summer of 2015, with the grading system to be finalized by December, 2015.

SB 270 (Miller) directs the BOE to require only math and English reading SOL assessments for third graders."

To read the full brief, visit our website.