{"id":7237,"date":"2014-07-16T12:10:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T12:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/&p=7237"},"modified":"2015-10-13T19:32:25","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T19:32:25","slug":"testing-in-the-trenches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/2014\/07\/16\/testing-in-the-trenches\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing in the Trenches"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n Jennifer Jennings and Heeju Sohn, <\/span>“Measure for Measure: How Proficiency-based Accountability Systems Affect Inequality in Academic Achievement,” Sociology of Education<\/em>,<\/a><\/span> 2014<\/span><\/div>\n

The phrase \u201cNo Child Left Behind\u201d added a tinge of wartime drama to education, conjuring up images of embattled teachers in the trenches of America\u2019s schools. In the years since this reform, new high pressure testing strategies have led to accusations of \u201ceducational triage\u201d\u2014 when teachers focus only on the students close to earning \u201cproficiency\u201d and leave both their high and low achieving classmates behind.<\/p>\n

To test whether such triage is actually happening, Jennifer Jennings and Heeju Sohn analyzed four years of student testing data from the Houston Independent School District. The data, which ranged from 2001 to 2004, allowed researchers to look at student performance both before and after the No Child Left Behind school reform effort and on two different kinds of tests– a \u201chigh stakes\u201d test which determined whether schools made adequate yearly progress on NCLB and a \u201clow stakes\u201d test that was not tied to performance evaluations or teachers\u2019 pay.<\/p>\n

When Jennings and Sohn compared scores on the high stakes tests, the found that in math, higher performing students did better later, while early low performers did worse. In reading, the higher performing students did worse later, and lower performers did better. These differences, according to Jennings and Sohn, \u00a0can be explained by the fact that teachers focused on students close to the cutoff point to get as many passing as possible. On reading, a test that more students passed, this meant the higher achievers got left out of instruction to pull more students up to proficiency. In math, which fewer students passed, the low performing students got left behind while teachers focused on keeping the already-talented ready for exam day. Or, in other words, educational triage. In fact, these patterns did not show up at all in the low stakes test results.<\/p>\n

Both the subject matter and the degree of difficulty of a test can change who gets the instruction, who gets labeled as struggling or successful, and even how the media and policymakers get their measures of educational inequality. \u201cPolicy makers,\u201d Jennings and Sohn conclude, \u201cface a series of difficult normative questions when they decide where to set the cut score for proficiency.\u201d For now it looks like the tests themselves may be digging the trenches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Jennings and Heeju Sohn, “Measure for Measure: How Proficiency-based Accountability Systems Affect Inequality in Academic Achievement,” Sociology of Education, 2014 The phrase \u201cNo Child Left Behind\u201d added a tinge of wartime drama to education, conjuring up images of embattled teachers in the trenches of America\u2019s schools. In the years since this reform, new high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,85],"tags":[34,37332,18860,26921,148],"class_list":["post-7237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inequality","category-politics","tag-education","tag-inequality","tag-no-child-left-behind","tag-standardized-test-scores","tag-testing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8280,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7237\/revisions\/8280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}