Published Wednesday, April 22nd in the Tucson Citizen as “Let’s set goal to reconfigure AIMS” and published Saturday, April 25th in the East Valley Community Sections of the Arizona Republic as “Flaws in AIMS test demand scrutiny and overhaul.” You may also wish to read my prior article on the challenge with the standards of AIMS from August 2008 entitled, “Where AIMS fails“.
Less than a month after finishing AIMS, my 6th, 7th and 8th graders (my children, not my students) are now taking NWEA MAP testing. Students will be pulled out for one to two periods at separate times to take the math and reading portions—far less invasive than the many hours required to administer AIMS.
The Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (NWEA MAP) testing is typically done three times a year to track a student’s progress. While the NWEA provides immediate results, as it’s an adaptive computerized test, Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS) results won’t be known for a couple months yet. While both tests factor into the school’s label under AZ LEARNS (e.g., “Performing Plus”), neither factors into whether a student moves on to the next grade. Schools are accountable, not students.
Next year my son will skip the whole thing, and then in 10th grade will start taking AIMS to see if he’s learned enough to graduate from High School.
Teachers in my district will be meeting the week after school ends to begin planning learning priorities for each quarter of the coming school year. They still won’t know how their students did on AIMS, so they can’t use it to assess their pedagogical success.
When school ends, parents and students won’t know either. Students will have report cards mailed that won’t include AIMS scores, though they will include their NWEA score.
If this sounds like a convoluted mess, you’re right.
We need a more coherent set of accountability for both students and schools.
The NWEA should have us rethinking the administration and structure of AIMS.
The NWEA adapts question difficulty to how well a student responds, potentially enabling better diagnosis, whereas AIMS can’t tell us why a student is getting something wrong.
The rapid results of NWEA demonstrate that whether through computer-based testing or traditional testing with electronic enhancements (in my large lecture classes, students use remote clickers to answer paper tests), we can dramatically improve the turnaround time on AIMS math, science, and reading. This would enable AIMS to be administered in early May when everything has been taught, and allow student performance to be evaluated in a manner to assess both teaching-effectiveness and whether particular students are ready for the next grade.
Writing, which generally has higher test scores anyway, would continue to be done early to allow for manual grading.
We should extend this system into High School. The final exit AIMS test is so weak that some 10th graders pass it easily, and yet so strong that that by 12th grade others are still falling short. This contradictory result tells me we’re not holding students sufficiently accountable for their learning—expecting too little of some and waiting too long before expecting too much of others.
Rather than a graduation test, subject area testing can continue into High School with scores part of the equation in determining advancement and graduation. Programs with more rigorous independent testing like International Baccalaureate programs could opt out.
We need to be careful when implementing expanded test-based accountability systems. In my classes, tests are neither my only means of assessment, nor my preferred form of assessment. Tests have strengths and significant limitations. We like them because they generate specific numbers, and we can standardize it, so all students take the same thing and are graded on the same basis. AIMS is full of multiple choice questions because they’re cheap to grade. That should also give us pause.
Learning has multiple dimensions that go beyond what a multiple choice test or single essay can capture. However, we do need a state-wide system that helps us better evaluate student learning and school and teacher performance in a manner that helps our entire system improve. Re-configuring AIMS would be a good place to start.
Dave Wells teaches at Arizona State University. He can be reached at Dave@MakeDemocracyWork.org. The views are his own.
True story:
I teach math at a community college. I asked a friend of mine who is a high school administrator why they don’t teach some of the math skills that we find the students lack when they enter the community college anymore.
He told me that the AIMS test doesn’t cover them, and since school funding can be tied to how well the school does on AIMS, every day that they spend teaching anything that is not covered on the test is a day they don’t spend teaching what is covered on the test, which means there is actually a cost associated with teaching anything that is not in the base curriculum that will be covered on the test.
Well, I guess it makes my job secure but it bothers me that we now have so many students entering the community college directly from high school who lack any basic grasp of fundamental skills.
Another issue with AIMS.
Quite a few years ago I was tutoring a tenth grader for the AIMS test. She had a practice booklet and we found at least two questions in which the answers given in the booklet were wrong. Not just could have been better expressed (though there were several of those as well) but actually wrong.
The questions on AIMS are not ever made public, unless they’ve changed the policy on it (in contrast to, for example, the SAT which makes each year’s questions available six months after the last test is taken.) It is important to do so because not only can it allow them to change students scores after the fact if an error is discovered (I know this has happened at least once with the SAT) but also it forces the testing company to make sure that the questions are not flawed. Saying that they are reviewed by ‘a committee of educators’ doesn’t cut it– just look at how many things that have been written by committees (including at educational institutions) are discovered later to include errors and need to either be edited, revised or on occasion scrapped altogether (I’d point at the legislature as exhibit one for this kind of thing.)
Hi my name is Michele Closset and I am responding to the editors comments Dave Wells about a need for change in the current testing procedures and how it relates to AIMS testing. I agree that tests do not always show whether or not someone truly understands the material. A simple true or false quiz or multiple choice test is not sufficient. Answering a question by giving an essay answer will provide more opportunity for a person to demonstrate whether they understand the material or not. It seems to me with the current technology that we have we can come up with a system that provides accurate testing scores and information in a timelier manner than is currently being used. It is possible if a new system could provide scores more quickly and different testing be implemented such as the NWEA MAP testing like the editor suggested we could keep better track where the real needs are. It is possible that different testing methods and having these methods of testing more frequent could provide a more insightful understanding where students or the teachers could improve in areas that may be weak or lacking in instruction. I have personally known many students that simply fell through the cracks, or were not challenged sufficiently when it came to their courses of study. This is an unfortunate tragedy to future generations. AIMS’ testing certainly has its weaknesses as the editor has pointed out so truthfully. It is far from the standard that it should be, but at least something is being implemented to help our educational system. The standards and methods for testing need to be raised to challenge our children’s knowledge and skills. Our children deserve an education that meets the highest standards of excellence! Thank-you for your comments. Sincerely, Michele Closset
This is indeed a helpful piece of article for our community. Hopefully, we can adopt it.
I was looking for home related articles this was good
I’m writing a paper for my Journalism class about the AIMS test and what could be improved about it. Thanks Dave Wells this helped me out a lot.