A Lot Riding on Test Scores Due This Week

Report cards will be released this week, but it isn’t students who are crossing their fingers. Across the state, school administrators and teachers are hoping their students made the grade on the Dakota STEP test.  

The annual August release of results from the spring administration of the Dakota STEP has become a pivotal event in the weeks leading to the start of school. Positive results allow school staff to launch the year with a swagger and a sense of self-assurance in the classroom. Negative results cast a pall over the faculty and leave the principal lying awake at night wondering how to turn things around. Either way, in the weeks before the start of school, teachers and administrators will spend hours poring over the data searching for patterns that highlight strengths and weaknesses in the way they teach reading, math and science.

Controversies Over the Test

Students in grades three through eight, as well as eleventh graders, take the Dakota STEP to fulfill the requirements of the federal government under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). But the test is controversial. Under NCLB, every state that receives federal aid is required to administer an annual exam to measure student progress, but each state is allowed to write its own exam.

Critics of the testing requirements of NCLB argue that there is so much variation between the tests administered by the states that the system fails to achieve the law’s goal of ensuring that students across the country are meeting high standards. (See, for example, the report from researchers at Fordham University: Proficiency Illusion report 2007 - PDF 2mb.) Compared to other states, South Dakota’s Dakota STEP has received low marks for its academic rigor. When the Dakota STEP and the tests of the other 49 states were compared to student performance on a national exam known as NAEP in 2006, the Dakota STEP received a grade of D+ and ranked below the exams administered by 31 other states. In other words, student achievement was probably not as good as the state’s educators were reporting. (See Education Next, Summer 2006.) 

Rapid City Has Cause for Concern

If the Dakota STEP tends to overstate student achievement, parents in South Dakota districts have cause for concern. Parents in districts like Rapid City and Sioux Falls, with large numbers of students who fail to score high enough on the exam to meet the state’s standards, may worry even more. In Rapid City, for example, for a number of years, some individual schools and the District as a whole have failed to hit the targets set by the South Dakota Department of Education.

The “District Improvement Plan” developed last fall and approved by the Board of Education in February outlined some of the District’s problems. Large numbers of economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and American Indian students, for example, scored below proficient in reading and math. In addition, in 2007 and 2008, 22 percent of all middle school students failed to score proficient or better in reading. (RCAS District Improvement Plan 2009 - PDF)

As required by the state, the Board of Education adopted its District Improvement Plan to address these low scores. The plan’s goals for the spring 2009 test asked administrators and staff in the District to see that:

• 82 percent of all students in grades K-8 score proficient or above in reading;
• 72 percent of all students in grades K-8 score proficient or above in math;
• 72 percent of all 11th graders score proficient or above in reading;
• 63 percent all 11th graders score proficient or above in math;
• 45 percent of all American Indian students score proficient or better in math.

When the scores are released this week, District administrators and teachers will find out if students hit these targets.

High Stakes for the District

For the Rapid City Area Schools a lot is riding on this week’s results. Under NCLB, districts failing to make adequate yearly progress have five years to turn around student achievement. Rapid City is already on Level 2 (of 5) in reading and Level 3 in math. If the scores released this week in math are not high enough, the District could go to Level 4. According to the U.S. Department of Education, this means it will have to take “corrective actions” such as “replacing certain staff or fully implementing a new curriculum, while continuing to offer public school choice and supplemental educational services for low-income students.” If these changes don’t work, the District could be forced to restructure failing schools by reopening them as charter schools or “replacing all or most of the school staff or turning over school operations either to the state or to a private company with a demonstrated record of effectiveness.”

Rapid City is not alone in this struggle to meet the state’s standards and the goals of No Child Left Behind. Many urban districts face similar challenges. Still, some positive news would be welcomed by administrators and teachers as the 2009-2010 academic year begins.