Standardized Tests

THE DEFINITION of gifted and talented remains elusive. Some school systems use standardized tests to identify smart students. Others, including Anne Arundel County, rely on teacher observations and parental advocacy.Some parents and educators might regard students who earn straight-A's as gifted, but grades could mean different things in different schools. Then there are debates over whether standardized tests really measure ability or potential. Are the tests so racially and culturally biased that some children are handicapped?

The issue of varying quality and performance among Howard County schools isn't just about schools and test scores. It's about housing, neighborhoods and communities, and ultimately about what this compact county of a quarter-million people will look like in the next century.That's the message given to the county's new Leadership Committee on School Equity by another schools panel sponsored recently by the County Council."You have to take into account the impact of schools on surrounding communities," said Sue Aaron, a Columbia resident who helped write the council panel's report.

Now comes Zachary Bush, 5 1/2 years old, a bright lad who can recite the alphabet and count past 60, who "plays well with others," who can zip his own jacket and tie his own shoes, who has a high I.Q. and enjoys using a computer, who scores average or above average in all standardized tests -- and whose parents are taking Zachary's school to court so that he can pass from kindergarten to first grade.Crazy, no?Well, no, say the administrators of the Key School, a private, pricey Annapolis-area institution, declaring that they should be the arbiters of all things academic and, if the Bush family doesn't like it, well, they can file suit.

A federal judge was right to strike down the NCAA's Proposition 16, which denied eligibility to freshman athletes who failed to score at least 820 on the SAT test or 16 on the ACT.U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Buckwater's ruling last week in Philadelphia affirmed what many educators have long believed -- standardized tests are racially and culturally discriminatory, and using them to help determine athletic eligibility is unfair.But the NCAA must now devise other, fairer academic standards for schools to adhere to, or chaos will reign.

JUST TWO days before a Public Agenda/Public Education Network (PEN) study found that just 28 percent of African-American parents believe that standardized tests are culturally biased, the Prince George's County Board of Education called for an investigation of potential racial bias in the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program or MSPAP.Noting a 17-point difference between white and African-American students' average MSPAP scores, board members concluded that bias is the culprit. Unfortunately, all of the evidence collected each year by the Maryland Department of Education and external sources indicates that this simply isn't so. I say unfortunately because fixing the test would be a lot easier than fixing the real problem -- a much more pernicious, complex, systemic problem -- poverty and all its consequences.

WASHINGTON -- Bill Gray could not believe what he was reading in the Wall Street Journal: 17-year-old Angela Malone had earned a 3.45 grade point average in high school and had scored 1,100 on the SAT, even as she worked part time and tutored younger students -- but couldn't get into the University of California at Berkeley, in her home town.Within a week, Gray, president of the United Negro College Fund, had arranged a scholarship for Malone, an aspiring doctor, to attend Xavier College in New Orleans.

A lot of public elementary and middle school principals haven't slept well the past few nights, waiting for the release of the scores from the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program testing this week.Four years ago on this page, I lauded the MSPAP as a different, improved way to test. That was after I had administered the test to a class of fifth-graders. Since then, I've moved on to a middle school, where I have given the test to eighth-graders.I still believe that it is an improvement over the standardized tests that required students to recognize, not generate an answer.

Baltimore teachers will be graded at the end of every school year on how well their students have learned under a landmark teacher evaluation policy adopted by the school board last night.Under the policy, which puts the city in the forefront of a national movement toward teacher accountability, teachers and their principals would agree to a set of individual goals that the teacher must meet by the end of the year.For instance, the goal of a fourth-grade teacher might be to raise the reading level of the class to a specific grade level by June.

I WAS IN THE MIDST of a cozy holiday gathering the other evening at the Guilford Avenue house where so many generations of my family have lived. One group clustered in the parlor. Another stationed itself in the dining room. A third hugged the kitchen table and chairs. Any newcomers were given a complete tour, from basement to third floor.Somewhere about 9 o'clock, my sister Ann produced an old Stewart's shopping bag cluttered with papers, documents she had discovered while doing a bit of pre-holiday cleaning and organizing.

The principal of the Barclay School, who fought for years before winning the right to use the private Calvert School curriculum in her city elementary-middle school, said yesterday that the two schools are ending their formal partnership.The six-year relationship with the Calvert School fell victim to a state-required test, the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, Principal Gertrude Williams said.Even though students were performing well in the classroom and on standardized tests, third-graders faltered on the last state test, and the school decided it had to adjust its curriculum to offer more MSPAP preparation, Ms. Williams said.

The movement to adopt national education standards is hurtling down the tracks to acceptance, even as many of the decision-makers behind it are laying eyes on the draft for the first time. While "voluntary" is the word that proponents routinely use to describe the proposed standards, that label is seriously misleading. The idea is that states are coming together of their own volition to support the drafting of these guidelines for teaching reading and math, and they will be free to accept or reject the final product.

Our view: What Ronald Peiffer, the deputy state superintendent, said he could not conceive of just nine years ago has happened. Forty-six states, D.C., Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands all agreed, at least conceptually, that classrooms ought to be teaching toward the same set of high standards. For nearly the past decade, the country has been trying to ensure that every child got a minimum education. Now it appears we are moving to recognize that the minimum is not enough and that we have to raise our expectations if we are going to compete with foreign countries.

Loyola College's Jesuit tradition calls for it to serve students who did not start with every economic, social or geographic advantage. Widespread research, meanwhile, shows that standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT favor those from privileged backgrounds and that such tests are less predictive of college success than excellent grades and a rigorous course load in high school. So, in search of a more diverse and accomplished student body, Loyola has joined a growing list of colleges and universities that no longer require applicants to submit an SAT or ACT score.

Candidate Barack Obama promised education would be a priority of his administration, and since taking office he has funneled $1.8 billion in federal stimulus money to Maryland schools to help avoid layoffs and program cuts. But now he faces a thornier problem: How to fix the federal No Child Left Behind law, which critics say focuses too much on punishing failing schools instead of providing the support they need to succeed. Last week, the outlines of Mr. Obama's plan began to emerge.

The Maryland State Board of Education sent a clear message yesterday to the approximately 9,000 high school seniors who haven't yet passed the standardized tests in algebra, English, American government and biology that are now mandatory for graduation: This train is leaving the station, so get on board if you want a diploma in June. That may be tough love, but seniors who get their act together and meet the requirement probably will look back one day and be glad educators made them toe the line.

The mood was about as giddy as a group of elementary school students at recess. Anne Arundel County Schools Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell, who had initiated a widely unpopular overhaul of Annapolis High School, stood smiling and giggling, his cheeks rosy, in the school's cafeteria after finishing a news briefing announcing that the school had for the first time in six years met federal testing benchmarks. "I'm excited," Maxwell said. "This is great news." After a pause he continued, "Did you get the part about me being excited?"

College students in Maryland and across the country might soon be taking standardized tests to determine how much they've learned on campus - part of a national effort to hold universities accountable for student achievement. An association representing more than 200 large public universities is expected to vote Sunday to recommend that its member colleges adopt standardized tests and within four years begin to publish the results. A group representing another 400 colleges will take a similar vote this month.

Although nearly a half-century has passed, Goucher College President Sanford J. Ungar has no trouble recalling the precise numbers that helped get him into Harvard University: 683 verbal and 749 math. "I'm appalled that I remember my SAT scores," he says with a rueful laugh. Despite the high-scoring president's happy history with the SAT, future Goucher applicants need no longer be burdened with standardized college entrance exams. This week the 122-year-old Towson institution joined the growing ranks of U.S. colleges - about 740 of 2,400 schools, by one estimate - that no longer require standardized test scores from all students.

At 42, it's still a model for what early childhood education should look like and a testament to why a comprehensive program of early learning and parental involvement is so important for low-income children and their families. But despite its relative success, Head Start is still struggling to meet its full potential. As it finally moves toward another reauthorization by Congress after being stalled for four years, Head Start deserves more money for programs and staff - and less reliance on standardized tests.

Salisbury University on the Eastern Shore has become the first school in Maryland's public university system to make tests such as the SAT optional for students with average grades of 3.5 or better on a 4-point scale. Although de-emphasizing standardized tests is justifiable, Salisbury officials are quick - and right - to point out that a number of factors should govern admissions decisions, not just grades or test scores. Questions have long been raised about how well standardized admissions tests predict first-year college success and whether they are economically and racially biased.