Schools for Tomorrow Blog

This week’s release of lukewarm third-grade CSAP scores comes at a bad time for those trying to save CSAP testing from an untimely death.  The Rocky reports:

Colorado’s $22 million testing program appears headed for replacement after more than a dozen years and scant evidence of improvement in recent results.

Thursday’s release of third-grade scores found seven of 10 children reading at grade level in February, a figure that has fluctuated little since at least 2001.

That figure means more than 40,000 mostly 9-year-olds could pick out main ideas and summarize what they’ve read, among other comprehension skills, at a level deemed proficient by state educators.

It also means nearly 17,000 children across Colorado could not.

But Deputy commissioner Ken Turner says that the fairly flat line does not signify stagnation in Colorado classrooms.

"The profile is not unlike that of other states, Maryland and others, that have seen rapid improvements in the early years . . . and then it kind of plateaus," he said.

The logical connection between CSAP scores and the value of the CSAP itself is yet another version of the old “kill the messenger” routine.  This flawed logic goes somewhat like this:  1) CSAP scores measure how well our schools are doing.  2) CSAP scores have not improved over the last several years.  3)  This is bad.  4) Therefore, CSAP is bad.  5) Burn CSAP!   It’s enough to make you want to watch the old Monty Python “Burn the Witch” routine again.

The logical flaws in this chain of argument are many.  For one, it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that Colorado’s education system is tanking based on a few years of flat scores.  More importantly, though, the attention paid to trends and results, whether up or down, demonstrates the very value of the CSAP.   It is the thermometer that allows us to determine whether our state’s educational temperature is healthy. 

Let’s let CSAP off the hook and keep our attention on the real problems.

 

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Testing, Accountability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.