Barbara Hollingsworth: Alternate assessments are better for educrats than students
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist
September 29, 2009
Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Jack Dale referred to my Sept. 22 column on inflated tests scores as "inaccurate" and "unsubstantiated" in his Sept. 27 letter to the editor ("Column on test scores misleading, inaccurate and unsubstantiated").
But if that's the case, Dale himself is to blame. The data I cited, which was sent by FCPS to the state Department of Education, shows an exponential explosion in the use of the Virginia Grade Level Assessments in Fairfax County schools.
For example, the number of students taking VGLAs instead of Standards of Learning tests at Poe Middle School more than doubled this year from 75 to 165 -- after the alternative assessment program was fully implemented.
Same for Key Middle School, where 51 VGLA students last year increased to 107 this year. Is it a coincidence that both schools' pass rates also increased by double digits?
Because neither DOE nor FCPS report separate SOL and VGLA scores - both combine them to calculate a school's overall pass rate - it is disingenuous for Dale to deny that the VGLA affects test scores. Data submitted by FCPS show that 14 of the 20 elementary schools with the most VGLA portfolios posted 100 percent pass rates this year; four more were at 98 or 99 percent, and only one was below 90.
It's ridiculous to argue that the massive jump in scores since 2006 - the year before the VGLAs were approved for students with learning disabilities and those still learning English - has nothing to do with the 1,200 percent increase in VGLA participation.
If Dale can explain how Lynbrook Elementary got a 100 percent pass rate (up 30 percentage points in just three years) when three-fourths of its students are non-English speaking without factoring in the 103 students (40 percent of third- through sixth-graders) who took the VGLA, he should be running the U.S. Department of Education himself.
Data released by DOE also shows that the grading of VGLA portfolios is unreliable and subjective. In spring 2007, work from 61 Fairfax County students was audited and 24 were rejected for a 39.3 percent overturn rate.
Same thing in spring 2008: 178 portfolios out of 590 audited were tossed, for a 30.2 percent error rate. This spring, 265 of 885 portfolios - 29.9 percent - didn't make the grade.
The fact that almost a third of all audited VGLAs are rejected, with no substantiating evidence to the contrary from Dale, makes it pretty obvious that these tests are not equivalent to the SOLs. But while higher scores make Dale and his administrators look good, they are actually quite harmful to the students who really do need help.
There are 32 Title 1 schools in Fairfax County with high percentages of disadvantaged students, for which FCPS gets federal funds for additional instruction in language arts and mathematics specifically to help these students pass the SOLs. If a Title 1 school fails to meet its annual yearly progress goals for three years, parents are entitled to "pupil place" their children in another school under No Child Left Behind.
When a high percentage of at-risk students are steered into doing VGLA portfolios instead of taking the SOLs (all of the top 10 VGLA schools are also Title 1 schools), the final test numbers are skewed.
But that's not all. If enough students in a particular Title 1 school "pass," all the students in that school forfeit their right to additional tutoring and/or pupil placement under NCLB, especially worrisome during a time of deep budget cuts.
The charade continues until parents figure out that the chief beneficiaries of the "alternative assessment" are really Dale and his staff of educrats, not their kids.
Barbara F. Hollingworth is The Examiner's local opinion editor.
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