No one likes standardized tests.

Students dread them. Parents wonder about their effectiveness. Teachers find them time consuming. Principals worry about “teaching to the test.”

Administrators fear results will “label” their schools inaccurately.

Still, some type of standardized testing is needed to gauge student and teacher performance. The tests also help make comparisons between different schools and districts.

The Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test (PACT) was South Carolina’s first statewide assessment program. The results of that test, used up until 2008, were disturbing.

Based on PACT scores, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) reports that in 2008 only 29 percent of South Carolina public school seventh graders and 28 percent of eight graders were “proficient” in reading.

Amazingly, politicians and school officials have called this an “improvement” because the numbers were only 28 percent and 23 percent seven years earlier in 2001!

Even worse are the gaps between white and black, and between rich and poor, in South Carolina’s public schools. In many cases they are growing, not shrinking.

In 2002, 38 percent of white eighth graders and a mere 11 percent of black eighth graders were reading proficient. That’s a gap of 27 points.

Six years later, black students had risen two points, and the gain was offset by a one–point increase among their white classmates.

In the same period, the wealth–gap in eighth grade reading scores rose from 27 to 28 points. Only 14 percent of low–income eighth grade students are reading proficient in South Carolina.

What is the proposed solution to these serious problems?

Lower standards and expectations.

Recently, state lawmakers and the Education Oversight Committee bowed to the special interests of the South Carolina School Boards and School Administrators Associations to weaken the new PASS test (PACT’s replacement).

National testing experts at the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) have already criticized the new PASS test standards “as among the bottom quartile in a recent cross–state comparison of proficient stands within 27 states.”

In other words, South Carolina’s standards are falling from among the nation’s highest to among the nation’s lowest.

NWEA noted that just switching from PACT to PASS, would bring about a “dramatic” increase in the number of students meeting the standards “even with no actual improvement on student performance.”

What this means is students and schools will automatically get better grades even without doing better on tests.

PASS was sold to parents and teachers as a simpler, less time consuming, and more helpful test than the PACT. Those are all great qualities, but using the transition to hide a lowering of student and school standards is disgraceful.

Those who push for the lower expectations are quick to change the subject. They argue that money is the problem, and more taxes should be collected for public schools. What they don’t mention is that schools in South Carolina are projected to receive $11,000 in public money for each and every student this year.

They also cannot explain how ever–more– money has not led to better public schools.

Since 1960, spending at public schools in the United States has quadrupled, even when adjusted for inflation. The money was used to reduce class size, hire more teachers and assistants, offer more classes and programs. But it did not improve test scores or student performance.

That’s the finding of the United States Department of Education’s National Report Card as published in the Long Term Trends report.

Lowering expectations is not the solution. It is an insult to teachers and students.

Local school boards and administrators need to support and enforce high standards in our public schools. In order to do that, parents and voters may need to raise the standards to which they are holding their local public officials.
Neil Mellen,
communications
director for South Carolinians
for Responsible
Government.