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CSAP Questionnaire

The answer to Question 4 is ‘B’ - Higher annual CSAP scores.

 

Instead, graduation rates and college enrollment have been dropping ever since Colorado started CSAP testing and grading every school based on those scores.  Researchers at Arizona State University found that while students show consistent improvement on the State exams, the opposite is typically true of their performance on other independent measures of academic achievement.  Studies also show that an over-reliance on test scores has caused a decline in educational quality for those students who have the greatest educational need.

 

“Regardless of what anyone claims about student and school characteristics, opportunity to learn is the single most powerful predictor of student achievement.”  The CSAP actually reduces opportunities for students, narrowing the curriculum and re-directing critical resources away from real solutions like smaller class sizes, after-school programs, counseling and family services, teacher training, mentoring programs, field experiences, and updated resources.

 

You can bet that if kids are tired of days spent on test-taking strategies, that parents want no part of it either.  “When the central aim of educational change is just to improve test scores, improved education is seldom the result.”

 

[Berliner, David & Biddle, Bruce. (1995), The Manufactured Crisis. Addison Wesley.]

[Ralston, Anthony, ‘Next Disaster in American Education: Rising Test Scores,’ Phi Delta Kappan, October 2003.]

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