Idaho - 2nd try

[Bob <BDeBuhr@EXCITE.COM>]

  Sorry - following is a "cut and paste" of the story in the Lewiston
Morning Tribune.

  Staring in 2006, Idaho High School students will have to make the grade in
standardized testing.

Q: Are graduation standards and the testing thataccompanies them ...?

                               Kathy Hedberg

Yet another requirement burdening Idaho's students?  Another tool to ensure
well-educated and well-prepared students? A panacea onto which the public
has latched to cure a problem that doesn't exist?  Yet another program
schools are forced to fund, or...
All of the above

One wants to be a neurosurgeon when he grows up. Another intends to
study math or engineering. A third isn't sure what her goals are after
college, but she knows it will take lots of work to get there.
These three eighth-graders at Lewiston's Jenifer Junior High School,
Nick Hardin, Lance Peterson and Alisa Busch, all 14, will be among the
first class of Idaho students required to meet the state's new graduation
standards in 2006. What that means is, for the first time all Idaho students
will be required to demonstrate a certain proficiency in language arts,
reading, math, science and social studies before receiving their diplomas.

"It means we're getting pushed," Peterson says. "It's hard already to
 work everything in." These three say graduation standards may be positive
in some ways, but it could cause problems for students who are struggling to
meet academic requirements. "If they're having troubles," Hardin says, "and
if the standards are raised it could make some of them drop out. "But if
they lowered (the standards) then school's not a challenge. Then it's a free
ride through high school.  Busch says if graduation standards mean crowding
her already busy days of school, homework and outside activities, that could
be a problem. "I would do it, but that gets kind of long and you get bogged
down. Even now people have trouble, and it's not that hard."

How the state will implement the new standards has not yet been decided,
although they will take effect this fall. The Idaho Board of
Education is in the process of hiring an assessment director who will help
steer school districts as they align their curriculums to meet the
graduation standards.

At some point students will be tested, possibly early in high school and
then again in the 11th grade. Students who are not making the grade by their
junior year will get some remedial instruction, most likely in summer school
between their junior and senior years.

Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Marilyn Howard says making
sure students don't fall through the cracks will be one of the chief
concerns. "One of the difficult parts of this whole thing is the issue of
student motivation," Howard says. "The idea would be that students will
respond when more is expected, and there's a fine balance there ... and
perhaps there's a kind of fear of failure that could spiral someone down."

Another concern is graduation standards will add yet another layer of
state-mandated testing. "A testing agenda requires resources," says Bonnie
Votaw, curriculum director for the Lewiston School District, including time,
personnel and money. "Teachers do not like testing. It takes too much time
away from classroom work," she adds. "Measuring the kids is good because it
tells us what they know and what we need to teach them. ... We don't need to
test them every day in every way."

Washington doesn't have graduation standards in place, but they are set to
begin with the class of 2008.  What Washington requires now is the
Washington Assessment of Student Learning, a comprehensive program of
testing in grades four, seven and 10.  In addition, both Idaho and
Washington participate in the national Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the
Tests of Achievement and Proficiency, which are voluntary.

Idaho also has writing and math assessments for students in fourth and
eighth grades. Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne is proposing extending
those assessments to the in-between grades.  Last year a state reading
initiative started for Idaho students in kindergarten through third grade.
Students who fail to meet grade level expectations are offered 40 hours of
extra instruction through tutoring or summer school.  Both states have
participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, which
sample students' learning in reading, writing, math and science. President
George W. Bush has proposed making those tests mandatory, making them the
first nationally mandated standards-based tests for schools. Bush's plan is
to use the scores to determine school accountability and base some federal
funding on the results.

What's behind this push for more testing? According to a study published in
December by Gerald Bracey of the Center for Education Research, Analysis and
Innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, this "sudden madness"
of testing began in the
1970s and early 1980s when some 35 states adopted minimum competency tests
to assure high school diplomas weren't based on social promotion, seat time
or both.  Large percentages of students failed these early go-rounds, which
led to the publication in 1983 of "A Nation at Risk." "Its highly selective
and negatively spun statistics were used as a clarion call to overhaul the
schools," Bracey writes. "The anxiety people might feel about their schools
was heightened by the fact that ... good news about schools served no one's
political education reform agenda."
 The Reagan and Bush administrations were pushing privatization, vouchers
and tuition tax credits and ignored positive data about students'
achievement, Bracey maintains. "A large analysis of the U.S. public school
system by Sandia National Laboratory engineers was suppressed for being too
positive," Bracey says. "It was finally published after the Clinton
administration arrived, but was seen by few people."
The consequence is most Americans are willing to believe the worst
about their public schools, according to Bracey. The public has a
perception the people running the schools can't be trusted to provide
accurate information on what students are learning.  This sentiment has led
to a call for something more objective in measuring student learning, he
says. In most instances that has turned out to be tests.

"All of this is coming together because we are so data-driven," says Sally
Tiel, coordinator of counseling and assessment for the Idaho Department of
Education.  "Business, in particular, is driving some of this testing," she
adds, "so we're making decisions and we're looking at changes that should be
made based on data and the research that goes behind it."

It is widely known businesses, especially high-tech and engineering, are
looking outside this country to fill their needs for workers. "At one time
... our jobs were pretty much open to people with high school diplomas,"
says Howard. "And now the workforce demands are different ... we need almost
all workers to have a specialized skill. "There's a real call right now for
people who have degrees in areas of math, science and technology, so there's
an employment shift."  In addition, Howard says, educators want to know what
motivates students and how to make sure they are learning. Tests are tools
to make curriculum decisions that will help them achieve their goals.

"We need to have better prepared students because we have higher demands for
them, and from the inside we're saying, 'Let's be sure at
each point the students are learning what they need to know.' " Local
business leaders acknowledge a growing need for an educated workforce. But
business is not, they say, the impetus behind more school testing.

"The standardized tests have nothing to do with business reality," says
Frank Carroll, spokesman for Potlatch Corp. at Lewiston. "We are interested
in students who come out of high school and ... out of college who can read
and reason and do math and are especially trained in areas that are
important with us."  Unfortunately, Carroll says, public schools and
colleges don't seem to be aiming their students toward meeting business
requirements.  Although Potlatch has no trouble finding workers because of
the company's broad-based employment search and high salaries, school
programs do not seem to be on the same track.  "We think this is quite
amusing. If there's a researcher out there that says the needs of business
is driving education, to us, that's false on its face.

"From a technical standpoint our kids don't even come close to coming
 out of school with the expertise of the Germans or the Japanese or the
intellectual accomplishment of ... the British school system.
"So if business was driving American education we would have standardized
testing that tested for things that are directly important to business and
you'd have a very focused, intensive education. As it is, it's all over the
map."

Susan Fagan, spokeswoman for Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories in Pullman,
says the company is concerned about the end result of the American
educational system and getting the workers it needs for the future. Recently
Fagan and the company's owner, Ed Schweitzer, visited with their
congressional delegation about granting more work visas to import workers
from other countries.  "There is a lack of qualified candidates," Fagan
says. "We do need more scientists. ... We think our schools are doing a
pretty good job, but when you look at the amount of scientists and
mathematicians that other countries are producing we're not producing the
... numbers that some other industrialized nations are." Schweitzer also is
taking a ground-level approach by supporting the local school system and
offering training classes for high school students to help gear them toward
technical fields. "If you can get them excited at the grade school level,"
says Fagan, "by the time they reach college maybe this is something they
want to do. "It's Ed and Mary (Schweitzer's) hope that these kids get
exposed to this other science and if any of them go into fields related to
it that would be wonderful. Another engineer in the world is a very, very
good thing."

Thomas Bitterwolf, a chemistry professor at the University of Idaho, served
on the Idaho Board of Education commission that developed the graduation
standards.  The goal is to reorganize the state's school system, starting
from the earliest grades, he says, so when students reach high school they
already will be prepared for the graduation standards tests. "What we knew
from the beginning," Bitterwolf says, "is that before testing can be used as
a graduation requirement, we have to have kids from approximately the eighth
grade under the new curriculum, so they are fairly exposed to the new
material."
Tests are only a tool. If Americans believe there isn't a need to reorganize
the educational system, Bitterwolf says, they are kidding themselves.  "I
think one of the problems we have in the U.S. in general is that we have
been willing to accept a second-class educational system while the world is
operating with a first-class educational system.  "The higher the
educational level of your population, the higher your gross income. The
numbers are out there. "If you want your state and your nation to be
prosperous, the way to do it is to educate your population to the highest
standards you can get.  "We've got a lot of good things going for us, but in
terms of what happens in education we are not up to the level of a
world-class society."  Translating that message to the public can be
"fighting words," Bitterwolf acknowledges. And helping students see the link
between more testing and their futures could be the biggest challenge
teachers face.





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