High Stakes Assessments

What is high-stakes testing?

A high-stakes test can be defined as a test that is “…used to make important decisions about students, educators, schools, or districts, most commonly for the purpose of accountability (Partnership, 2014).” These tests are used to make decisions regarding progress and efficiency of students, teachers, administrators, and schools. What distinguishes a high-stakes test from a low-stakes test is not the form of the test, but how the results of the test are used (Partnership, 2014). High-stakes tests are used to promote students to the next grade, decide pay raises or cuts for teachers, or to decide the level of federal funding a school or district will receive in the coming year. On the other hand, a low-stakes test is used primarily by the teachers to look for student progress or areas of need. Low-stakes tests are used to guide teacher instruction in the classroom.

The American School of Doha

From these definitions of testing, it could be said that The American School of Doha (ASD) does not actually do any high-stakes testing, at least in the Upper Elementary division. The school participates in MAPs testing twice per year in the subjects of math, language usage, and reading. These scores are not used as promotional criteria to the next grade. They are also not used to make any judgements about teachers. In fact, when viewing MAPs scores, administrators only look at aggregate scores for each grade level and the school. They do not look specifically at scores from individual classes. This helps reassure teachers that they are not being judged or compared by their scores.

Teachers go through professional development to understand how to run diagnostic reports from the MAPs website so they can see specific areas of need for the students in their class. They can then use the data to guide their instructional practices in order to best help the students. Teachers will work with their grade level coworkers to examine data from the lowest quartile scores and discuss strategies for remediation for these students. This may mean placing some of these students in the student support program, which would be support teachers pushing into the classroom to work more closely with these students. The students in need of support tend to be mostly Qatari students. Even though the population of Qatari students is only about 10% of the student body, they make up the majority of the students in the student support program and often have the lowest scores on all of the MAPs tests. It is not clear if this has an effect on the morale of this subgroup, but efforts are made by all teachers and the student support services teachers to make sure these students are not singled out or made to appear below the level of the other students (Zarter, 2018).

This all seems to fit the idea of a low-stakes test, even though MAPs is generally regarded as high-stakes, more than likely because of the form of the test. Teachers seem to value the data that the MAPs tests generate and actively use the data on a regular basis. They do not feel pressure to teach to the test, and are discouraged from doing such by administrators. Teachers know that not all information on the test is covered in the curriculum, and that is OK with everyone. One fact to point out is that MAPs test scores are used as part of the evaluation process for new students applying to the school. The MAPs scores are not used as the sole determinant of whether or not a student gets accepted, but they are considered along with the rest of the application.

Ferguson Elementary School and the state of Georgia

I interviewed a teacher who used to teach elementary grades in the state of Georgia. In 2010, Georgia received Race to the Top money in part because of the creation of teacher and leader evaluation systems. In 2013, legislators passed a bill requiring those evaluation scores to be 50% of a teacher’s or administrator’s evaluation. That number was later reduced to 30% and 40% respectively in 2016 (High Stakes Testing, 2018). The Georgia Milestones test replaced the CRCT and is now the high-stakes test in use to determine promotion criteria in many grades.

This teacher worked at Ferguson Elementary School, a Title 1 school with a high minority population and many ELL students. In grade 5, students are required to pass the standardized test in all subjects in order to move on to middle school. Only students who have an IEP that specifically states they are exempt from test requirements, such as those with very low English proficiency or a serious learning disability, can be promoted without passing scores. This leads to teachers spending most of their time teaching to the test. Teachers have worksheets with ‘test-like’ questions for the students to practice throughout the year. This puts a strain on teachers and students, and deemphasizes other needs the students may have (Zarter, 2018).

The school’s population as a whole has been below state average for proficiency on the Georgia Milestones tests every year. Math has been its strongest subject, while the English test has the lowest number of proficient scores. There is not a statistically significant difference between black and Hispanic groups, who together make up 89% of the population. Black and Hispanic students have consistently scored below the school’s average scores (Explore, 2018).

Conclusion

There is a large difference in student achievement when comparing Ferguson Elementary to the Upper Elementary at ASD. Whereas Ferguson students face a high-pressure test with significant repercussions for failure, the ASD students have only their parents to impress with their scores. The teachers at Ferguson spend much of the year teaching to the test and working on test-taking skills, but the teachers at ASD focus on teaching a well-rounded curriculum that also emphasizes nonacademic skills, such as social-emotional well-being. Students at ASD as a whole have always scored higher on average than the US and international norms for the MAPs test. The students from these two schools come from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds, and that must account for some of the achievement difference. But the absence of high-stakes testing and the presence of high quality curriculum must surely have an important effect on student happiness and achievement.

References:

Partnership, G. S. (2014, August 18). High-Stakes Test Definition. Retrieved February 17, 2018, from https://www.edglossary.org/high-stakes-testing/

High Stakes Testing. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2018, from http://publiceducationmattersga.org/high-stakes-testing/

Explore Ferguson Elementary School in Duluth, GA. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2018, from https://www.greatschools.org/georgia/duluth/6581-Ferguson-Elementary-School/#Race_ethnicity*Test_scores*Overview

Interview with Nick Zarter - 4th Grade Teacher at The American School of Doha [Telephone interview]. (2018, February 13).