RALEIGH – Shameful.
That’s the only apt term I can think of to describe the state of North Carolina’s “accountability” system for public schools. It is a shame that officials from the Department of Public Instruction manufactured a ludicrous statistic on graduation rates that has made our state a national punchline to a bad joke. It is a real shame that for many years DPI has set the cut score – the percentage of questions a student must get right to receive a proficient designation on end-of-grade tests – so low that on some tests students could meet the standard simply by guessing. And it is a crying shame that North Carolina politicians and activists cite these end-of-grade test scores in their efforts to swipe additional money from taxpayers to build and operate schools.
I’ve experienced this during my recent service on a commission appointed by Wake County officials to offer suggestions for meeting capital needs in education, transportation, and other services over the next 25 years. Confronted with information about the county school system’s higher-than-average cost for school construction, administrators responded that since Wake County’s EOG scores were so high, it proved that the system must be making the right decisions – and that its high-cost model for school design had educational benefits. Most commission members accepted this statement uncritically, as have media reports comparing Wake schools to those of other jurisdictions.
Unfortunately, it is simply impossible to know how Wake’s schools truly compare to those of other communities. Our EOGs are not administered outside the state, obviously. Comparisons of SAT scores don’t measure the performance of older students who have dropped out or aren’t bound for college.
Let me put it this way: if North Carolina ever tried to market its EOG tests to other states’ schools, the result might well be a long list of complaints at the Better Business Bureau and lawsuits for false advertising. The tests are absurdly easy and statistically worthless. I say this as a parent of a child who just spent part of a week taking his EOGs, and apparently viewing the experience as a kind of quasi-vacation. At least I confirmed from the experience that the Little Conqueror possesses, appropriately, a keen horse sense.
Paul Peterson and Frederick Hess, professors and co-editors of the magazine EducationNext, have just published another analysis of state testing and accountability standards. They compare performance composites on state-derived tests to performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), independently controlled and widely considered a rigorous set of tests. Shamefully, North Carolina joined Oklahoma and Tennessee at the very bottom of the list, each earning the grade of F for the weakness of the respective state’s proficiency standards.
South Carolina, on the other hand, was third in the ranking, one of only six states to earn an A. Its state testing standards aren’t much different from the NAEP – that is to say, they are relatively rigorous. When South Carolina gets kudos for its education policies, and North Carolina gets withering criticism, the word that inevitably comes to mind is shameful.
And when North Carolina politicians and school administrators attack educational choice by saying that private schools aren’t held to the same standards as public ones, and that any participating private institutions should have to participate in the state testing program, another term suggests itself: laughable.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.