Published Wednesday, August 6, 2008 in the Tucson Citizen as “Taking aim at problematic assessment test” and is forthcoming in Southeast Valley Opinions of the Arizona Republic and possibly the East Valley Tribune. Image credit: Arnie Bermudez, Tucson Citizen.
School’s back. With last year’s AIMS scores finally released, we’ll soon discover which schools are “failing.” Students’ scores on AIMS in grades 3-8 have no bearing on their report card, and don’t even arrive home until weeks after school ends, but high school students must pass AIMS or possibly not graduate.
We need change. Mesa School Board member and State House Representative Rich Crandrall has ruffled the feathers of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne. His legislation, tacked on to this year’s budget at the last moment, limits the next contract for a corporate AIMS test provider to 1 year and creates a committee to evaluate AIMS as a high-stakes test for High School graduation; he’s stepped in a good direction, but just not quite cast the net wide enough.
We need to re-evaluate the entire structure of the Arizona Instrument for Measuring Standards. On its face, who wouldn’t want to measure standards to assess student, teacher, school, and district performance?
But can 68 multiple choice questions measure 82 standards?
Take 6th grade math, for example. Five strands are broken into 17 broad concept areas where 82 specific standards are placed. For instance, determining the area of triangles is a specific standard under geometry. AIMS uses 11 questions to measure 13 concepts in this broad concept area and reports out as percent correct.
Simple math tells you, at best, two specific concepts aren’t measured at all. Furthermore, no teacher assessing if students understood how to measure the area of a triangle would use only one question. She’d probably try different contexts, use different kinds of triangles and give students different information to ascertain how well students understood it.
Furthermore, this standard lacks clarity. The area of a triangle is one half base times height, but the height is only a side if it’s a right triangle. Do we want students to be able to calculate the height? Or will it be given?
The area of triangles is conceptually linked to the area of parallelograms and rectangles (also on the standards for the 6th grade). Students ought to be able to explore this kinesthetically. If you put any two identical triangles together, you’ll get a parallelogram (whose area is base times height). And if you re-arrange pieces of the quadrilateral, you can turn it into a rectangle whose area is length times width, a formula which can easily be demonstrated on large lined graph paper.
Now show that with a multiple choice question!
Multiple choice questions don’t allow us to see enough of how students think through problems; the answer choices give clues to some students as to what the right answer is even if they don’t fully understand the concept—and others can be tricked by similar answers or understand a concept but make one error and get no credit.
Except for writing, where we use one essay to evaluate a student’s writing, every question on AIMS is multiple choice. And now the scary part: We’re going to add science to the mix. Any scientist should cringe at the thought of using multiple choice to evaluate science. That’s better for trivial pursuit.
In short, standards need to be honed for each grade into fewer essential elements that are truly assessed by AIMS and other classroom-based accountability measures. Assessment needs to be balanced in a manner that encourages deeper thoughtful thinking, not simply memorizing a formula. We need to add open ended items to AIMS, get AIMS results back to students, teachers and administrators before the school year ends, and make sure we augment AIMS by other means of accountability.
Many of these recommendations are found in the report of the Commission on Instructionally Supportive Assessment—and that would be a good place for Crandall’s commission to start.
Dave Wells of Tempe hold a doctorate in political economy and public policy and teaches at Arizona State University. He can be reached at Dave@MakeDemocracyWork.org.
Sources: Crandall legislation:
http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2008/06/27/20080627aimstest08272008-CR.html 12 News Budget may kill AIMS by Brahm Resnik - Jun. 27, 2008 06:04 PM
AIMS test may get overhaul
High-stakes graduation requirement may be replaced by grade-promotion standards
The Associated Press Published: 07.16.2008
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/altss/printstory/local/91007.php
Sixth grade standards can be downloaded from the Arizona Department of Education
AIMS testing based on individual report cards from my own children and confirmed via email correspondence with the Arizona Department of Education. Additional questions are used for the norm-based standardized testing, which compares student performance with those outside Arizona (on what-is another issue). See also http://www.azed.gov/standards/AIMS/Administering/Default.asp for technical issues and AIMS.
Commission on Instructionally Supportive Assessment http://www.nea.org/accountability/buildingtests.html
See also the book by the chair of that commission: America’s “Failing” Schools: How Parents and Teachers Can Cope With No Child Left Behind by W. James Popham (2004) which gives an excellent and assessable review of standardized testing and accountability.