Here’s the point: PACT is tough. It’s not easy to score proficient or advanced on it because, unlike other states, we set the cut scores high. So when more students meet those standards it’s a good thing, no matter what SCRG says.

The standards can be as tough as Ali, but if they’re not being enforced (which they’re not) and people are cheating (which they are), then what’s the point?

Absent enforcement, standards mean nothing.

-FITSNews

“We found that South Carolina’s definitions of proficiency in reading and mathematics are relatively difficult, compared to the cut scores set by the 25 other states in the study. In other words, South Carolina’s tests are well above average in terms of difficulty.”

That’s from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which is neither paid to think that way nor, presumably, high.

So what did ten years of testing actually do? Well, it consumed two weeks or more of each school year. It sent principals and teachers into bunker mentality. It forced teachers to teach to the test and never slow down if the students didn’t grasp a topic.

Well, it did line the pockets of the test makers (who are connected to whom?) and kept a bunch of high paid educrats employed spinning the results.

Wake up, people! Teachers are all we need to handle the situation. They know which kids are Below Basic before the tests are handed out.

And guess what – kids are on average, average. Some kids will be dumb as rocks and never get any better no matter how much of other people’s money you throw at them. Just as we can’t teach a kid to run a 10 flat 100 meter race, you can’t turn every kid into a genius. We should be providing skills that match the capabilities, not trying to jam every kid into the same cookie cutter approach.

http://www.thestate.com/opinion/story/524055.html

Okay! It’s a lot more than just poverty. It is also the shameful “mini-me” standard advocating a “minimally adequate” standard for education in SC.

Check out our link, sic(k) willie. It’s from “minimally adequate” to you.

BIN News
Flair and Balanced

As you noted, teachers (rightly) complained about it. Changing the test may have been too slow to come, but it is happening. Meanwhile, PACT and accountability — a package driven in SC by the generally conservative business community, by the way — have given the state and its public schools some experience to build on….in other words, not a total loss.

This quote from the “bureaucrat” you deride seems pretty reasonably balanced:

“I think that what we learned from PACT is that accountability is important,” Sternberg said. “The issue is whether PACT became too much of a focus for accountability, and that is always a worry with any kind of standardized test.”

Yes we read Mike’s column, and have commented in response to somebody else pasting it in its entirety in a previous post.

Look, people. Just as every blind hog finds an acorn, every Hall-of-Famer has days when he puts up an O-fer.

Oh well.

As for “N.O.T.,” the only people who think our state’s academic standards are high either get paid to think that way, or are are high themselves.

We won’t meet our objectives for average yearly progress under No Child Left Behind, even though our PACT scores rose A LOT, because we haven’t lowered our standards. We could have, and we didn’t.

You know all this. So I think you are no different than South Carolinians for Responsible Government (so laughable), about which the Spartanburg Herald Journal just had this to say:

“When scores are rising and progress is being made, it isn’t helpful to anyone to deny that progress or reject it as insignificant ‘incremental” progress.’ Give students and their teachers some credit for the success they’ve achieved.”

Belittling progress
Higher test scores are good, no matter how you view them

Published: Friday, September 12, 2008 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 12, 2008 at 10:18 a.m.
It’s become a regular pattern over the past few years: The state Department of Education releases a set of test scores – ACT, SAT, PACT – that shows improvement by South Carolina students, and South Carolinians for Responsible Government follows with a news release that attempts to turn the good news bad.

It happened again this week. State education officials reported that the state showed marked improvement in proficient and advanced scoring across the board in 2008, the final year of PACT administration in the state’s public schools.

South Carolina students scored higher on the tests. More of them met the proficient standard and more met the advanced standard. The numbers of students meeting those standards aren’t as high as we’d like, but the movement is in the right direction.

It’s still not good enough for those pushing to use taxpayers’ funds to send kids to private schools. SCRG, which refuses to let South Carolinians know who funds its efforts, sent out its news release explaining why the improvement was actually a failure.

The group’s thinking is that since the scores of eighth-graders aren’t as high as third-graders, “social promotion of unqualified students remains a major problem in public schools.” Of course, that conclusion is unwarranted. There could be a host of reasons why eighth-grade scores are lower than third-grade scores, but the group isn’t really interested in the reasons. It’s interested in running down the state’s public schools, no matter what the results show.

SCRG says it is targeting the state-run public school system, the bureaucracy. But it’s belittling and denigrating the success of students in public schools. It continually demeans the job done by the teachers in those schools.

The group is pushing for school choice. Fine. But does that have to mean continually finding nothing to praise in our public schools, even when test scores rise?

The group can use all its money – wherever it comes from – to push for voucher programs for private schools. But it doesn’t have to continually undermine the morale of and confidence in the state’s public schools.

There is a lot of work to be done in our schools. Graduation rates are too low and dropout rates too high. Too many scores don’t compare well with levels in other states.

But when scores are rising and progress is being made, it isn’t helpful to anyone to deny that progress or reject it as insignificant “incremental” progress.

Give students and their teachers some credit for the success they’ve achieved.

This story appeared in print on page A6