The most shocking thing I learned from the American Institutes for Research’s new report by Dr. Gary Phillips? The gap in expectations between states with the highest performance standards and those with the lowest standards is equivalent to three to four grade levels. That’s double the national achievement gap between white students and black students.
Unlike with achievement gaps, however, this expectations gap is a little harder to spot through a quick read of test results – and that’s because states with the lowest performance standards tend to have the highest proficiency rates, according to AIR’s report. If you set the bar really low, more students are going to get across it.
It is only by introducing a common scale – which AIR did by benchmarking the states’ performance standards against international standards – that it’s possible to truly compare proficiency rates from state to state. What AIR found when they did this was that states with the highest standards also had higher student performance.
Why is this important? As AIR puts it in their report, “The lack of transparency among state performance standards leads to a kind of policy jabberwocky: the word proficiency means whatever one wants it to mean. … This looks good for federal reporting requirements, but it denies students the opportunity to learn college and career readiness skills.”
According to AIR, the Common Core State Standards are a critical first step, but they are not sufficient to close the expectations gap. In addition to challenging content standards (i.e., what is taught), states also need to set consistently high performance standards (i.e., what is tested). Without the latter, states will still be able to post artificially high proficiency rates while graduating students who are not adequately prepared to be successful in college or career.
As AIR notes in its report, however, support for the Common Core State Standards has been eroding, and the number of states planning to conduct common assessments based on those standards has dropped precipitously. We’ve posted before (courtesy of Mass Insight Education President Justin Cohen) on the bumpy road of the Common Core roll-out – for a refresher on that post, click here.
And for more on the Common Core implementation, Learning First has been conducting a great series of podcasts with people who are working hard to get it right: give them a listen for some really interesting insights into the implementation process.