May the Farce Be With You
By Goldwater Institute: Matthew Ladner, Ph.D. (11/03/06)
Proficiency on AIMS doesn't mean much - Sometimes words and phrases mean what they say. Sometimes they don’t. "No Child Left Behind" is catchy, for example, but doesn’t mean what it says. "Accountability" and "proficiency" are other such words.
The word “proficient” is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as, “having or marked by an advanced degree of competence, as in an art, vocation, profession, or branch of learning.” Both the Arizona AIMS and the NAEP exams use this term to describe a certain level of achievement on their respective tests.
Arizona uses the term proficient much more liberally than NAEP. As the figure demonstrates, more than twice as many Anglo students achieve “proficiency” on AIMS as on NAEP in 8th grade reading. More than 4 times as many Hispanic and African American students achieve proficiency on the AIMS 8th grade reading exam as on the equivalent NAEP exam.
The Arizona State Board of Education is dangerously close to making AIMS a farce. Cut scores have been lowered and there is little to no evidence that Arizona public schools have been improving as a result of testing. The time has come for state policymakers to reassess our “accountability” strategy.
Matthew Ladner, Ph.D., is vice president for research at the Goldwater Institute.
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php?/1176.html
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