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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > June > 13 > Entry
Editorial: Ohio is late, but on right testing track
Junking the Ohio Graduation Test and exchanging it for “end-of-course” exams is a great idea.
In fact, subject-specific tests were a great idea when then-Gov. Bob Taft’s commission first proposed them 10 years ago. The group that made that pitch included then-University of Dayton President Ray Fitz and Tom Breitenbach of Premier Health Partners.
Though the state missed its chance to be a pioneer in high school end-of-course exams, the Ohio Department of Education is catching up. It announced last week a plan to make the switch as early as 2013.
The state will develop tests designed to measure whether students really have mastered the material in specific courses.
An example is Algebra II, one of seven subjects that some Ohio students took end-of-course exams in this year as part of a pilot program.
Algebra II is a high school student’s first foray into higher-level math; research shows that doing well in this class strongly correlates with success in college. A state Algebra II exam, taken when students complete the course, is a much better way to judge their understanding of the material than a general 10th-grade math exam.
It’s also a way to make sure that schools are really covering the subject, not passing off a basic class as Algebra II.
In other states, subject tests cover a range of subjects, from basic to advanced courses. A minimum number must be passed to graduate and students often get at least some choices about which tests they take.
In addition to these tests, and instead of having an Ohio Graduation Test, Ohio will pay for every student to take the ACT college entrance test. There won’t be a minimum score needed for students to get their diploma. Rather, the goal of pushing the ACT is to get students thinking about college and what they have to do in high school to be prepared for college.
Having almost every student take the ACT also permits a fairer comparison of Ohio students with those in other states.
The 10th-grade Ohio Graduation Test served its purpose of raising the standards for graduation. It replaced a test that was based on eighth-grade material. But beyond that, it isn’t very useful. It measures general knowledge and doesn’t test whether students have really learned the content in specific classes.
Moreover, the passing score has been kept low enough that all but a tiny fraction of students ultimately pass it. (If you don’t pass, you can’t graduate.) Because it is only taken in Ohio, there is no way to compare Ohio’s students with those in other states. It means nothing to most colleges.
Gov. Taft’s 2000 commission was ahead of its time in many of its recommendations. Its other good ideas — breaking down test data to make it more meaningful, developing standards for each subject and attaching tests to those standards at various grade levels — were largely adopted and have helped teachers and parents spot problems and gaps in kids’ knowledge.
But end-of-course exams didn’t make it into law back then. In 2000, only two other states were using end-of-course exams. Now 14 have them and several others are moving in that direction.
That the commission’s work still looks goods a decade later speaks well of the 33 carefully selected educators, legislators and business leaders who came up with the ideas. Brother Fitz believes taking another look at their work might be worthwhile.
“I’m a big fan of revisiting things and getting a conversation going with the best minds in the state so they can wrap their thinking around this,” he said. “We know much more now than we did 10 years ago about what we can do and (what) we can’t do.”
When the state and the country jumped on the testing bandwagon — out of concern that too many schools aren’t giving students what they need — everyone knew that it would take time to get good at figuring out what students really know.
That process hasn’t been easy, it’s definitely not over and it probably will never be perfect. But the movement is evolving in the right way.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Ohio government, Ohio politics, Scott Elliott
Comments
By Max
June 13, 2010 8:35 AM | Link to this
Again, this is a waste of time; either the teachers/school is entrusted (the ‘testing bandwagon’ is a cynical response to this) for classromm performance and testing which the taxpayers are billed for, or, do away with grades altogether. This obsession with testing is now the obstruction to the changing needs of students. Placing an education curriculum into a bureaucratic evaluation diminshes that same education to answering only one question: “Is this going to be on the test?” Again, this is a waste of time and, to date, testing has not improved education one bit. Some argue it has aided in its demise. A ‘national corps of teachers’ with national certifications, pay scales, benefits, retirements, and promotion and tenure processes, is a more reasonable solution than another revised test that is outdated before its ink dries.
By fortressdayton
June 13, 2010 6:54 PM | Link to this
Children have to be able read before they can take tests on their own. Let’s work on that first, Dayton.