Problems With CSAP
A Call for the Investigation of Colorado Standards for Sources of Disparity: The Segregation that is maintained by CSAP's restriction of programs, discriminatory test reporting, and obstruction of learning opportunity.
A report of the Denver Classroom Teacher's Association's Minority Concerns Task Force, September 2005
By Francis J. Young, Chairperson
To obtain a copy of the above titled report, please click on the hyperlink below.
For information on how students are faring in other states, we have two charts available for downloading. I must add one warning on these charts: they were scanned in and thus are likely to be large files. If you aren't using a fast connection, you should expect these to take awhile to load. Thank you for your patience.
Charts on Vulnerability of States
We call for the elimination of CSAP for a variety of reasons. The following are some of those reasons and we generate more of them as we hear more from teachers, parents, and students all over Colorado. Thus, this feature is not intended to be all inclusive at this time. Please write us and share your CSAP anecdotes. The primary reasons for our opposition are stated below.
Psychological Harm to Children
Children are now being tested far more often than in the past. Teachers in most districts are being advised to stress the importance of the CSAPs to both the children and their parents. Many children are getting very anxious about CSAP well in advance of the tests. It has also been reported to us that in a few cases students get so anxious that they have vomited on the test. CSAP has become so important to schools that we have also been told that administrators have cleaned up soiled tests and submitted them anyway.
Students are also being asked to take Achievement Level Tests (ALT) in most districts. In addition, most teachers also use classroom assessments as well. This adds up to a lot of testing days in school and a lot of anxiety for some very small people. Test days are also days lost to instruction, further shortening the actual school year.
High Stakes Testing is Inherently a Bad Idea
A high stakes test is one which measures how well a school and its
students are performing and uses the scores to make important decisions.
Sometimes the schools’ test scores are used to decide if the school
will receive additional funding or not. The scores have also been used
to decide to convert low-performing schools into charter schools. This
is what happened to Cole Middle School in Denver.
In addition, when we base school funding, teacher salaries, or bonuses
on students’ test scores, it is difficult to say what aspect of
testing to use. If we were to use the tests as a measure of achievement,
what indicator should we use? An absolute standard of performance? Student
improvement over time? Competitive comparison with other schools in
the district? Depending on what choice we make here, we will reach different
conclusions about what should be done with the schools. We believe that
no community should base important decisions about their schools on
the scores of one test.
In general, in this system, too much emphasis has been placed on ‘punishing’ low-performing schools and not enough on helping those schools improve. Many of the factors that cause students to not perform well are beyond the teachers’ control. For example, health, nutrition, family background, frequent moves, and home language are all factors in performance. Holding teachers accountable for all aspects of students’ lives is only likely to increase antagonism between teachers and students.
Finally, CSAP testing costs Colorado between 14 million and 16 million a year. We argue that this money would be better spent in instruction than testing.
What about the Charter schools? Aren ’t they an improvement?
Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are intended to be freed from many of the rules and regulations that some people believed were holding regular public schools back.
Cole Middle School in Denver has just been converted to a charter school. We will have to watch what happens there.
In 2003, a report from the federal Department of Education compared tests given to fourth-grade students in public schools and charter schools. Overall, charter school students did not do any better than traditional school students and performed significantly lower in math. In addition, they compared achievement of fourth-grade students from similar impoverished backgrounds and found that the public school children did considerably better than the charter school students. So far, charter schools have not delivered what they promised.
High-Stakes Testing invites Corruption
Much of this area is just coming to light now. News reports from December 2004 indicate that much of the supposed gains in achievement in the Texas schools were the result of organized, educator-lead cheating on their version of the test known as Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. This is extremely important news because Texas education policies were the model for this entire system of using high-stakes testing to evaluate schools. At this time, it appears dozens of Texas schools were involved in the cheating scandal and there are suspicious scores in “hundreds of other schools”.
Another news item that concerns us is that Armstrong Williams’ company, the Graham Williams Group, was paid $241,000 by the U.S. Department of Education to advocate this form of testing. You heard right, the Bush administration paid a prominent commentator to support the educational reform of the No Child Left Behind legislation. NCLB is the legislation that mandates testing of the students. The U.S. Department of Education has defended its’ decision to use taxpayer funds for this purpose. What do you think of that? If this legislation is so vital to education, why do they need to bribe people to support it and tout it?
We’ve also been provided with information suggesting that some Colorado schools have engaged in an unofficial ‘push-out’ program. Schools currently receive a -.5 if a registered student doesn’t take the CSAP. Therefore, low-performing students must still take the CSAP. So, marginal students are encouraged by teachers or administrators to drop out of school before CSAP testing occurs. Rather than discouraging school drop-outs, we’ve been advised that many schools do indeed encourage adolescents to leave school.
We envision an education system where students feel welcome and are encouraged to stay. And whatever else our children should be learning in schools, we do hope it isn’t that cheating is a necessary ingredient to success.
CSAP Encourages Narrowing of the Curriculum
From a teacher’s point of view, it only makes sense to teach what you will be evaluated on. Thus, teachers and school districts are encouraged to ‘teach to the test’, that is, to tailor instruction to what is on the CSAP. CSAP tests 3rd to 5th grades in reading, writing, and math. Thus, science curriculum is already falling behind because one needs to find the time for instruction somewhere and science isn’t being tested yet!
Other complaints from science instructors concern the fact that the emphasis is on testing, not thought, and that students now focus on answers rather than the scientific process used to obtain those answers.
In 2006, science will be added to the CSAP for 5th and 10th graders. However, as we hope we’ve already demonstrated, this may not help the real issue. When we allow tests to direct instruction, the tail is always wagging the dog.
Several people have talked to us about wanting an enriched curriculum, to perhaps include subjects such as Art, Music, Latin, and other foreign languages. We would have to say that under the current system this will not happen. Schools are falling behind as it is, and if one’s whole goal is getting high marks on just a few subjects on the CSAP, then just those few subjects will be taught or emphasized.
We also fear for the future of gym, as it is hard to see how it will be tested on CSAP. We know how it is tested in real life: currently one-third of our children are seriously overweight and heavily at risk for diabetes and heart disease.
CSAP labels Children
With CSAP, we have winners and losers. Some children will be labeled slow learners, some will be labeled gifted. Children often internalize those labels and there is even research indicating they live up to them. For the losers, we have a negative self-concept, for the winners we may have a sense of smugness, superiority, and entitlement.
Our position obviously is that schools should be for learning for all students, not for the further marginalization of some.
NCLB Legislation places Education under Federal, not Local Control
A provision in the NCLB Act of 2001 is supposed to ensure that federal officials do not control state or local school boards. However, with the specificity of some of the sections and the way these are being implemented, it appears the federal government is making decisions previously reserved for local communities.
At this time New York City may be the test case for local choice. School boards there decided to use Month by Month Phonics but this choice may not be in line with the federal program of Reading First. We’ll keep you posted.
NCLB is Expensive for the States
We have made this point in other places, but this testing costs Colorado about 15 million a year. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Other states have had financial consultants estimate what they would need to spend to meet the goals of the No Child Left Behind Legislation. Base costs in Montana would increase between 34% and 80%, Nebraska’s were estimated at 45%, and South Carolina’s would increase 84% (see CSAP bibliography, Mathis, 2003). In New Hampshire, it was estimated that they would receive 17 million dollars from the federal government in return for 126.5 million in new obligations. Small wonder that Nebraska’s legislature called for full Federal funding of the mandate.