DaytonDailyNews.com

EDITORIAL: FLUNKING THE TEST

Ohio's tests have to be fair to kids

By the Dayton Daily News

Everyone involved with education always understood that eventually the tests that Ohio students must pass to graduate high school would get tougher. After all, it's hard to explain why current graduates are only required to pass a ninth-grade proficiency examination. Next fall's sophomore class will be the first required to pass an 11th-grade test before graduating. Though that change affects only students whose graduation is still three years away, the state's education department is already giving students prototype exams, and administrators and teachers are worrying about large percentages of students failing. In today's final installment of their series Flunking the Test, Dayton Daily News reporters Scott Elliott and Mark Fisher note that the first time the math portion of the new Ohio graduation test was given to sophomores in March 2003, 76.9 percent flunked. Nearly 95 percent of Ohio's black students failed the exam. There was some material on the test that students hadn't covered yet, but the failure rate was so high - including among advanced students - that the education department had to pause. The exam has since been changed. But many still think that in trying to meet deadlines imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind act, Ohio (and other states) haven't really decided what they expect students to know. And whatever concepts ultimately appear in the test have to be taught over a period of years, not just weeks. Students can be tutored to prepare for proficiency tests, but few can successfully cram. There's just too much to cover, and, anyway, that's not the way to approach a test that's supposed to measure years of academic grounding. There's no question that states and local school districts have a heightened sense of urgency about what students are learning because of the No Child Left Behind law. In addition, the new reporting requirements are forcing policy makers at every level to deal with the fact that the gap in achievement levels between white and minority children is unconscionable. As a country, and as communities, we have to figure out how to fix that inequity. But how the new law is implemented is intensely important. The tests have to be a fair representation of what's being taught, or teachers have to be given a chance to change what they're teaching. The state education department also has to give up the notion that a certain amount of failure should be built into the test-taking process. If tests are purposely designed to be so hard that a significant number of students can't possibly pass, then that violates the promise of the very name "No Child Left Behind." Young people today can't go anywhere without adults telling them that they have to get an education. And when adults say that, they don't mean a high school education; they mean some college or training beyond high school. If students learn early in their high school career that the system is impossibly stacked against many of them, some will quit and not come back. The message Ohio's kids need to hear is that getting through high school requires hard work, but people are there to help them and that adults want them to succeed. That's what it means to leave no child behind.