[AAACE-NLA] AAACE-NLA Digest, Vol 53, Issue 16

Wed Oct 17 09:44:00 EDT 2007

Tom,

I generally agree with your analysis, but not with one of your conclusions. Where is the evidence that children have been subjected "to hours of drill and practice in test taking rather than
 engaging in learning important content and skills"? 

That is, where is the evidence that neither NAEP nor a state-specific standardized test accurately assesses the mastery of important content and skills, whether directly or indirectly? 

Kearney Lykins

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Today's Topics:

   1.  Literacy Testing Debacle (tsticht at znet.com)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:55:11 -0700
From: tsticht at znet.com
Subject: [AAACE-NLA] Literacy Testing Debacle
To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
Message-ID: <1192488911.4713efcfccc35 at webmail.znet.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

12 October 2007

The Great Literacy Testing Debacle in the United States

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

Definition: Debacle: n. A total, often ludicrous failure. Online
 dictionary
at
www.answers.com/topic/debacle

The United States seems to be caught up in measurement mania when it
 comes
to literacy. The No Child Left Behind law calls for extensive testing
 of
children's reading abilities in different grade levels. For adults, the
U.S. Education Department has developed adult literacy tests, and Title
 2:
The Adult Education and Family Literacy Act of the Workforce Investment
 Act
of 1998 calls for accountability measures which the U. S. Education
Department has implemented in a National Reporting System that makes
extensive use of adult literacy tests. But in all these cases, the
 actual
measurement instruments and procedures for measuring reading/literacy
 and
comparing states suffer from major flaws. They all follow different
procedures in their development, which renders them incomparable, and
 hence
interpretations of the data produced by comparing the findings of the
various tests are essentially meaningless.

Testing Children's Learning of Reading

On page 39 of the June 4, 2007 issue of Time magazine a graph is
 presented
showing differences between the percentage of fourth graders in each
 state
who are deemed "proficient" in reading based on each state's different
standardized test. The graph also shows the percentage deemed
 "proficient"
on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which are
standardized tests given in all states in the nation. There are some
 very
large differences between the state and national test results. For
instance, Mississippi reports that close to 90 percent of
 fourth-graders
are proficient in reading on the state developed test, while on the
 NAEP
only about 19 percent score as proficient. This is a whopping 71
 percentage
points difference in the numbers of fourth graders in Mississippi who
 are
considered proficient in reading.

The Time article provides data indicating that using state test data
 the
average percentage of fourth graders considered proficient is 70
 percent.
Using the national NAEP tests only 30 percent of U.S. fourth graders
 score
as proficient. This is a 40 point average gap between state and
 national
estimates of fourth grade reading proficiency. The state and national
 tests
use different procedures to determine if children are proficient
 readers,
and are hence incommensurate. This raises the question of which tests
should be considered as the valid indicators of the reading abilities
 of
the nation's fourth grade children, the state or the federal tests. ?or
perhaps neither.

Testing Adult's Literacy Ability

Jumping ahead to when fourth graders have grown up, the 2003 National
Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) presents data for Prose and
 Document
literacy which indicate that in 1992 15 percent of adults over the age
 of
16 scored as proficient on these tests while in 2003 13 percent of
 adults
scored as proficient, a drop of 2 percent during the decade.
 Surprisingly,
only 30 percent of adult college graduates scored as proficient in
literacy.

Although there are clearly differences between the NAEP reading tests
 for
fourth graders and the adult literacy tests, again rendering them
incommensurate, nonetheless they both attempt to portray how many of
 their
target groups are "proficient" in literacy. The data indicate that
 there
are fewer than half as many adults (13 percent) who are proficient in
literacy as there are fourth-graders (30 percent) who are proficient
 using
the federal-made NAEP, and there are only a fifth as many proficient
 adults
as there are proficient fourth graders (70 percent), if the average of
 the
state-made tests are used. This suggests a tremendous loss of
 proficiency
as children grow into adulthood!

Measuring Literacy For Accountability in Adult Literacy Education

The problems of assessing literacy also show up in the accountability
 system
of the nation's Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS), which is
 made up
of the some 3,000 programs that are funded jointly by federal money
 from
Title 2 of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 and state and local
 funds.
The National Reporting System (NRS) which prepares reports on how well
adults are learning literacy in the AELS has acknowledged that
 different
states use different standardized tests, with differing amounts of time
between pre- and post-tests to assess growth in literacy learning. The
 NRS
has also indicated that the comparison of educational functioning
 levels
and level gains across states is complicated by this lack of
 comparability.

But despite the acknowledged lack of comparability in the tests and
procedures used in various states the NRS goes ahead and computes
 averages
of the percentage of adults making learning gains across the fifty
 states.
Of course, the lack of comparability in measurement tools and their
administration renders these data totally meaningless and useless to
Congress (or anyone else for that matter) in deciding whether or not
 states
are using their federal funds responsibly and productively.

The Debacle of Testing Literacy Ability

Despite all these faults of testing for literacy skills, there is
 apparently
no hesitancy in using the test results to reward some educators and
 punish
others for what they are doing to teach literacy, whether to children
 or
adults. Despite extensive use of standardized tests of various sorts by
 the
fifty states, thirty- year reading trend data with the NAEP show no
meaningful improvement for 9, 13, or 17 year old children since the
 early
1970s. Further, the testing of adult literacy in 1992 and again in 2003
shows little or no improvement in literacy at the lowest levels and a
decline at the highest levels.

To date, then, the great literacy testing debacle has cost hundreds of
millions of dollars, threatened teachers and administrators, subjected
children to hours of drill and practice in test taking rather than
 engaging
in learning important content and skills, and cast aspersions on the
literacy skills of America's workforce, thus advertising to the world
 that
the U. S. workforce is incompetent. This cannot be good for the health
 and
welfare of the nation nor its international competitiveness in the
 global
economy.

Even if we could get the testing of literacy right, which we have not
 done
up to now, there is no way we can test ourselves out of the serious
educational problems that afflict our K-12 and adult literacy education
systems. There is a word for the obsessive repetition of utterly
 foolish,
unreasonable, and failed practices: insanity.

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net

------------------------------

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End of AAACE-NLA Digest, Vol 53, Issue 16
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