Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ASuel
Alternative Degrees
More and more teenagers are exiting
a formal schooling early'to earn a General
U Educational Development (GED)credential (Murnane, Willett, & Tyler,
s 2000). Although young people who
S have earned such alternative degrees do
3 not technically countin dropout statiso tics, many of them undoubtedly left
school because of their concerns about
passing A.E,Arigorous &--graduation -tests.
F0.16
Sixty-three percent of the states with
I high
high qrhnnl
Attaching states to tests
school fyrq(iiiqtinn
graduation te,;ts
tests nn.-,terl
posted
decreases in the average age of students
alienates students from
who took the GED exam after the
high-stakes tests were implemented,
their own learning
according to our analysis of KidsCount
experiences in school.
data (Amrein & Berliner, 2002a). Other
studies confirm our finding (Haney,
2001; Murnane, Willett, & Tyler, 2000).
In North Carolina, for example, the
lead to higher student retention and
proportion of students under the age of
dropout rates.
20 taking the GED increased by 73
percent between 1986 and 1999,43
High Scbool Dropouts
percent more than the proportion for
Dropout rates are climbing throughout
the nation during the same time. And in
the United States, and many researchers
Georgia, almost twice as.many teenagers
hold high-stakes tests at least partly to
earned GEDs in 2000 than in 1990
blame (Rothstein, 2002). Some
(American Council on Education, 2001).
researchers found that dropout rates
were 4 to 6 percent higher in schools
Student Retention
with high school graduation exams.
Students who repeat a grade are signifiAnother study reported that students in
cantly more likely to drop out of school
the bottom quintile in states with high(Goldschmidt &Wang, 1999). In states
stakes tests were 25 percent more likely
where promotion to the next grade
to drop out of high school than were
hinges on passing the state exams, hightheir peers in states without high-stakes
stakes testing policies also contribute to
tests (Jacob, 2001). Researchers in yet
ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND CURRICULUi DEVELOPMENT
33
-T--,F
V D.,.
..,
FHigh-stakestestsoften
decrease student motivation
and lead to higher student
retention and dropout rates.
students are retained, thousands of
them drop out of school.
Retention in grade does not motivate
students to learn more or perform
better. Instead, retention motivates
many students to leave school early. In
some ways, this problem may be worse
than the problems that the high-stakes
testing policies are designed to fix.
I G U RE
Stakes
Graduation
contingent on
ahigh school
graduation
exam
Grade-tograde
promotion
contingent
on a promotion
exam
State
publishes
annual school
or district
report cards
State identifies
lowperforming
schools
according to
whether they
meet state
standards or
improve yearto-year
Monetary
awards given
to highperforming or
improving
schools
State has
authority to
close,
reconstitute,
or revoke
accreditation
or take
over lowperforming
schools
State has
authority to
replace school
personnelprincipals or
teachers-due
to low test
scores
2004
2004
Mississippi
Nevada
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Alabama
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Louisiana
Maryland
Minnesota
2003
2003
-X
'X
2002
SouthCarolina
2002
Tennessee
-X
-X
Texas
2003
.irginia-
State permits
students in
failing schools
to enroll
elsewhere
X.
I
ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
35
High-stakes testing
policies have resulted in no
measurable improvement
in studentlearning.
tion rates in each. In this way, we evalu-
SAT.
I
After the second high-stakes graduation test went into effect, the short-term
results from 1994-1995 again show that
students in New York lost 3 points
compared with the rest of the nation.
The long-term results were also negative, with New York students losing 6
points compared with the nation from
1994-2001.
We performed this type of analysis
for each of the 18 states, looking at each
of the four achievement measures and
also considering changes in participa-
F I G U11 f
SAT Changes
* New York
o Nation
SAT Scores for New York State and the United States,
Before and After High School Graduation Tests Took Effect
1200
1200-
:
:
\0
::
Yearhigh-stakesgraduationtest
:
tookeftook
effect
i0; iVt:000i00t
i:
11601120 -
8 10D80 -|0t
i
t0t:0t
: 0
1040-
E 960
920
880
j:
1977 78 79 80 81
0::
82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92
:00 0:ji;
93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 2001
were obtained through personal communications with Jim Maxey Assistant Vice
President forApplied Research atACT. SAT compSitescores (7977-2000) were available online (wwvw.collegeboard.com) or were provided by the College Board.
Source: CTcomposite scores (1980-2000) were availableonline(wwwactog
)or
7Itstimeto abandon
-7
A Better Way
If the data for 18 states with high-stakes
testing policies foreshadow what will
happen as we implement the highstakes policies written into current
federal legislation, we risk reducing
student motivation to learn, driving
more students and teachers out of our
schools, and becoming a less educated,
less learned people. Although test
scores will rise and our politicians will
be placated, we will have hurt our
public education system.
As we think about testing policies,
we should remember the wisdom in the
farmer's comment that weighing a pig
every day won't ever make the pig any
fatter. Eventually, you have to feed
the pig.
Weighing or assessing may not work,
but everyone looks busy doing it, and it
costs much less than providing all
37
.edu/civilrights/publications/dropoduts
/dropout/haney.pdf
I
Hauser, R. M. (2001). Should we end social
promotion? Truth and consequences. In
G. Orfield &M. L Kornhaber (Eds.)l
PolicyAnalysisArchives, 8(49).
p. 14.
Authors' note: A longer version of this
article is available online at http://epaa
.asu.edu/epaa/vlOnl8. The work on
this project was funded in part by the
Rockefeller Foundation. The opinions
expressed are entirely those of the authors
and may not represent those held by the
Rockefeller Foundation.
Copyright 2003 Audrey L. Amrein
and David C. Berliner.
Audrey L.Amrein is a research professional at the College of Education of
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ;
amrein@asu.edu. David C. Berliner
is Regents Professor of Educational
Leadership and Policy Studies at the
College of Education of Arizona State
University; berlinerasu.edu.
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