Kansas Education Journal

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This bill will allow a district to keep up to 10 percent of its general fund budget in a contingency reserve fund. Current law would reduce this amount to six percent for school year 2012-2013 and subsequent years. The House version extended the 10% limitation for three more years. The Senate took out the three year limitation and provides for the 10% limitation for all future years.

3/24/2012
By MICHAEL STRAND
Salina Journal

With the exception of health care, few fields of public policy prompt more dispute than education.

If there’s one point of near-universal agreement, it’s this: Students spend too much time taking tests.

Yet over the next few weeks, students in three Kansas school districts each will spend several days taking state-approved tests in math, reading and science — more or less because the federal government says so.

The three districts — McPherson, Clifton-Clyde and Kansas City — had applied to the U.S. Department of Education for waivers to the federal No Child Left Behind law, to offer various other nationally known tests instead of the Kansas state assessments.

The requests were partially denied earlier this week.

This was the first year for Clifton-Clyde and Kansas City to seek such a waiver, but they were following the example of McPherson, which last year received the first such waiver in the nation.

The testing waivers are a small part of an overall shift in all three districts away from emphasizing scoring well on the state tests and toward ensuring students are ready for whatever comes after high school.

All three districts say their new goals will remain the same — and that in the words of McPherson Superintendent Randy Watson, “We will give the tests, but it’s not what we’re going to put our stock in.”

Sen. Jerry Moran, a longtime critic of No Child Left Behind, called the federal decision “terribly troublesome,” and said he’s trying to set up a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

The McPherson model

In late February 2011, McPherson won a waiver from using the state assessments and began using a series of ACT tests that the district thinks more accurately test for what it calls “Citizenship, College and Career Readiness,” or “C¬³.”

For Watson, the waiver was one more step in a process of shifting his district to a new educational model — a process he says started with staring at a wall of sticky notes in his office.

Each little paper square contained one quality he and others in the district had as goals for students; among those were being able to get into good colleges and succeed, being ready for the work world, and being good citizens.

Watson’s moment came when he realized one seemingly glaring omission. “Nowhere on that wall was ‘Do well on the state assessments.’ ”

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, schools have placed great importance on those tests, spending considerable time prepping students for the tests, hosting pretest pep rallies and post-test pizza parties and other celebrations to encourage students to do their best.

After all, the results of the tests are released to the public, and districts that repeatedly fail to make “adequate yearly progress” are subject to various sanctions.

Do well, we get pizza

In talking with students, Watson found their buy-in on the tests amounted to “If we do well, we get pizza,” while at the same time, many were working to increase their ACT scores so they could get into a better college or qualify for more scholarships.

And, Watson said, it became apparent that while the ACT and some other nationally recognized tests were good predictors of success after high school, “I challenge anyone to take the state assessments and make those claims … . Saying a kid scored ‘proficient’ or ‘exemplary’ doesn’t really tell me anything useful … ‘proficient’ on the state assessment just means they have some basic reading skills — that’s all.”

In comparison, the ACT family of tests — the EXPLORE for eighth- and ninth-graders, the PLAN for sophomores and juniors and the ACT for seniors — tells whether a given student is “college ready” based on ACT’s years of following students after they take the test and comparing their scores to how well they do later.

Ready to go to work?

The McPherson district’s proposal in the fall 2010 was to substitute the various ACT tests for the state assessments starting in sixth grade, and use that data to determine whether each student was on the right “trajectory” to graduate and enter the world successfully.

Acknowledging that college isn’t for everyone, the district also started giving the ACT WorkKeys test, which focuses on the student’s ability to apply what they’ve learned.

One question asks students to determine the best place to install a thermostat that controls greenhouse vents; another asks the best place on a flatbed trailer to place a heavy load.

WorkKeys awards gold, silver and bronze workforce readiness certificates, and one of the district’s goals is every student earn at least a bronze by graduation.

Giving students those various ACT tests in addition to the state assessments seemed pointless; that’s why the district sought the waiver.

In one meeting about the proposal, Watson said, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the plan “courageous.”

Made national news

After the McPherson district’s waiver made news in early 2011, Watson spoke to other school leaders across the state about the C¬³ plan.

The Clifton-Clyde and Kansas City districts decided to do something similar; Clifton-Clyde calls its model “Ready4Life,” while Kansas City’s is called “Excellence in Instruction.”

Put together, the three districts represent much of the spectrum of districts in Kansas:

* Clifton-Clyde: $3.9 million annual budget, 305 students, 37 percent low-income families, and 94 percent are white.

* Kansas City: $322 million budget, 20,200 students, 87 percent low-income, 14 percent white.

* McPherson: $39.9 million budget, 2,400 students, 40 percent low-income, 85 percent white.

They got their answers

Like McPherson, the Clifton-Clyde and Kansas City districts wanted to use the ACT tests for upper grades; Clifton-Clyde and KCK also wanted to use the Northwest Evaluation Association’s MAP tests instead of the state assessments in lower grades.

This past August, the Kansas Board of Education endorsed the two districts’ plans.

Because the McPherson district’s waiver was for one year, it was also up for review by federal officials.

This past week, the three districts got their answers: In lieu of the state assessments, Clifton-Clyde and Kansas City could give the ACT to seniors, and the ACT Explore to eighth-graders.

However, the districts could not substitute the ACT Explore for the state assessments in sixth and seventh grade, and could not substitute the MAP test for the state assessment in lower grades.

Additionally, McPherson’s permission to use the ACT Explore for sixth- and seventh-graders was not renewed.

For it, then against it

It was that last part that left Watson scratching his head.

“What I don’t understand about the federal decision, the justification, is they said there’s no validation for using the ACT Explore for sixth- and seventh-graders,” Watson said. “But they approved it last year because it was such a high standard.”

“I note that the technical manual available from the assessment developer indicates that the EXPLORE is specifically intended for use in grades 8 and 9,” Assistant Secretary of Education Michael Yudin wrote this week in a letter to state officials, explaining the reasoning behind his decision.

That’s true — but only generally, Watson said.

He contacted ACT and received a letter from Jeff Allen, the company’s director of statistical research, detailing that because the McPherson district has rebuilt its curriculum around college and career readiness — including in elementary school — the EXPLORE test is valid.

“The alignment of EXPLORE’s content coverage and McPherson’s curriculum is further enhanced by McPherson’s adoption of ACT’s College Readiness Standards for 6th and 7th grade,” Allen wrote. “This adoption is intended to raise expectations by adopting higher standards for the earlier grades. The appropriateness of EXPLORE for 6th-graders depends on level of alignment to the College Readiness Standards, and McPherson’s explicit adoption of the standards is an important consideration.”

Times, people change

In denying Kansas City and Clifton-Clyde’s request to substitute the MAP test for the state assessments (Clifton-Clyde wanted to use MAP in third, fourth and fifth grades, KCK wanted to use it third through seventh grades), Yudin wrote, “It was not part of the initial waiver granted to (McPherson) and I am declining to further expand the extraordinary nature of this waiver to include additional assessments that are not part of the Kansas State assessment system.”

Watson notes the 2011 waiver was approved by Yudin’s predecessor: “It was a different person, making a different decision.”

Raising the bar

“It was a partial victory, but we’re disappointed,” said Clifton-Clyde Superintendent Cheryl Keim.

The district was recognized by the Legislature in 2009 with the “Highest Performing Academic School District in Kansas Award,” based on the state assessments; the elementary school placed first in the state, the middle school placed second, and the high school 14th).

In 2010, the district gave the ACT Explore test to seventh-graders — and was surprised at the results, which state Education Commissioner DeBacker described in a letter this past summer to state education officials as the district was beginning its waiver application process.

“The Explore test resulted in much lower scores than expected,” she wrote. “These same students were consistently scoring above average on state assessments … . The data spoke for itself. For a district that consistently received the Standard of Excellence, students were not excelling on the Explore, PLAN or ACT.”

Need remedial courses?

Those results mirrored what McPherson found a couple of years earlier.

In 2009, 87 percent of students at McPherson High School met the state standard for English, 89 percent met the math standard, and 92 percent met the science standard. But by ACT’s definition, 74 percent were considered “college ready” in English, 58 percent in math, and 34 percent in science.

“We’ve heard of kids going off to college and having to take remedial courses,” said David Smith, spokesman for the Kansas City district. “We didn’t have the high level of expectations we should — coming out of high school ready for what’s next.”

Smith, too, expresses frustration that the district can’t use the MAP test instead of the state assessments.

“It’s very clear the standards on the MAP are higher,” he said. “We’re looking to challenge ourselves, and the U.S. Department of Education wouldn’t let us.”

This is ‘troublesome’

Sen. Moran said he’s concerned about the decisions for all three districts but finds the decision to require McPherson go back to using the state assessments in sixth and seventh grades “terribly troublesome.”

“I’m also concerned about the other districts, but what happened in McPherson concerns me more,” Moran said. “They gave permission and took it away, and there’s not been a good explanation given.”

Moran said that if he can’t get a face-to-face meeting scheduled with Duncan soon, he’ll bring up the issue when Duncan comes to the Senate Appropriations Committee to make his case for Education Department funding next month.

Hanging by a purse string

The districts flirted with ignoring the federal decision and skipping the state assessments anyway.

“The board had decided we wouldn’t take the state assessments, regardless of whether we got the waiver,” Keim said.

But there’s a possibility doing so would jeopardize federal funding the districts receive to provide extra education to low-income students.

That “Title I” funding amounts to $43,000, or just over 1 percent of the district’s total budget, Keim said. It’s used to pay for 1 1/2 teachers who work with low-income and at-risk students.

“Our Title I funds were at risk if we didn’t take the state assessment — that meant we have to go ahead and take them anyway,” Keim said.

“There are significant financial penalties for not giving the assessment,” said Smith. “So not giving it was not really an option for us.”

For the Kansas City district, Title I funding amounts to $11 million a year, or about 3.4 percent of the total budget.

In McPherson, Title I is worth $250,000, or about 0.6 percent of the district’s total budget.

There’s also some concern, Watson said, that ignoring the federal mandate could jeopardize Title I funding for the entire state.

At next week’s McPherson School Board meeting, Watson predicts “there will be serious discussion from the board about the consequences” of ignoring the federal mandate and absorbing the loss, but “I will recommend we approve giving the state assessments.”

We’ll do it, but …

None of the three districts plan to spend any additional time preparing students for the tests — or on the pep rallies and pep talks that often precede them elsewhere.

The state reading, math and science tests are each divided into three blocks, for a total of nine test sessions; while there’s no time limit, students typically take about an hour on each session. To avoid score-sapping test fatigue, schools often spread those sessions over several days.

“We may do the whole thing in three days,” Watson said. “That’s not what you’d do if you were paying attention to the results.”

No matter the schedule, Watson said, the state assessments are taking up time that could be spent learning.

Takes away from learning

“You despise things that take you away from your focus,” he said. “It’s like asking KU to play another basketball game this week — it’s not part of the tournament, just ‘We really want you to play this extra game.’ ”

“Last week, we worked out a testing schedule,” Keim said. “We’ll start testing right after spring break, and our philosophy is we won’t prepare for the state assessments.”

“When it’s time, we’ll give it,” Smith said. “Otherwise, we’re not going to pay attention to it. We’re not going to take our eye off that prize.”