State And National Examinations

This article focuses on state placement and achievement examinations in the public school system. It discusses the ways the No Child Left behind Act of 2001 has affected school districts and their testing procedures in all states. Arguments for and against the "No Child Left behind Act" are detailed. High school exit exams and college entrance and placement exams and their ramifications are also covered.

Keywords Adequate Yearly Progress; Advanced Placement; College Entrance Exams; Educational Assessment; Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA); Exit Exams; High School Exit Exams; High-Stakes Testing; No Child Left Behind Act of 2001; Placement Exams; Standardized Testing

Overview

The United States does not have a national curriculum or mandatory national testing of any type to assess the knowledge and skills students have attained in grade school and high school. Federal legislation can help direct some standards; but most authority over what is taught lies with local school districts and the states themselves, and these entities rely on tests as their primary assessment tool. “During the 1970s, many states introduced minimum competency testing requirements for high school graduation or grade-to-grade promotion”; and in the 1980s, states began implementing statewide testing programs (Linn, 2005, p. 80). Many states used standardized testing to assess their students; others contracted with test makers to develop tests intended to better match their state curriculum guidelines. In the 1990s, states began to veer from these standards and look toward assessing higher-level skills and reporting success as the percentage of students at or above proficiency (Linn, 2005).

This is not to say that there is no federal oversight. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 was the first federal education law that provided monetary funds for kindergarten through twelfth grade. The funds were authorized for educator improvements, teaching materials, resources to support instructional programs, and promoting parental relationships ("Elementary and Secondary Education," n.d.). The most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is called the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This most recent reauthorization's “goal is to raise instructional standards by requiring states to set challenging expectations for what students should know and to be able to demonstrate that knowledge” (Toch, 2006, p. 54). No Child Left Behind has added new requirements and mandatory testing and federal reporting with potentially grave consequences for those states and districts that are not showing adequate progress, making testing a high-stakes proposition in a world where students' test scores can be different on any given day for reasons that have nothing to do with what they have actually learned.

High-Stakes Testing -- No Child Left Behind Act of 2001

The No Child Left Behind Act “requires the assessment of students in mathematics and reading/English language arts in grades three through eight and assessment of students in mathematics and reading/English language arts in one high school grade by the 2005-2006 school year” (Linn, 2005, p. 81). By the 2007-2008 school year, states will also have to assess their students in science-at least once in grades three through five, once in grades six through nine, and once in grades ten through twelve. No Child Left Behind also stipulates that states are “to set challenging academic content standards and that the assessments must be aligned with the state's content standards” (Linn, 2005, p. 81). The act, however, does not define content standards, set the performance standards for each state, or detail the type of assessments and cutoff scores that should be used, leaving these determinations up to each individual state. Each state is also allowed to set the minimum number of students needed for reporting results for subgroups to determine whether a school or district has made adequate yearly progress. Previously, the Educate America Act of 1994 and the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 “called for performance standards that were intended to specify the level of student achievement that would be considered proficient” (Linn, 2005, p. 81). No Child Left Behind goes further and lists what states need to use to set their annual measurable objectives that are set on the percentage of students that function and succeed at or above proficiency. These standards are what are used to determine if schools, districts, and states make annual yearly progress, and the progress targets are set to match all children at the proficient level or higher by the year 2014. If the percentage of students passing state tests is insufficient, schools have not made adequate yearly progress. Sanctions are “imposed on schools not meeting their annual yearly progress two years in a row; and the consequences are increasingly severe for schools not meeting targets for a third, fourth, and fifth year in a row” and include allowing students to transfer to other schools, replacing school staff, having the state take over the school, and loss of federal funding (Linn, 2005, p. 91).

Some positive aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act are that schools are trying to align curriculum and instruction with their state's academic standards and assessments. Schools can use the test data to target instruction to meet their students' needs, and districts are serious about assuring their teachers are using effective practices in their schools and following best practices ("From the Capital," 2006). The increased testing has the potential to help improve schools. The American Federation of Teachers reviewed reading, mathematics, and science standards and assessments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and found that a majority of states now have detailed, specific grade-by-grade content standards in all three No Child Left Behind subject areas (Azzam, Perkins-Gough & Thiers, 2006). No Child Left Behind also focuses on having high-quality teachers in every school, which can also help improve school districts and students' learning.

There are many concerns regarding potential consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act. Among them are political conspiracy and corruption of the exam settings and methods and test results. In 2004-2005 “there was evidence of testing fraud by administrators and teachers in order to show adequate yearly progress” (Petress, 2006, p. 1). This evidence included fabricated “results, changing of test pages and inappropriate prompting of students during test taking by teachers. School administrators making (and in many cases being enabled by state and federal rules) decisions as to what constitutes student dropouts, failure, and exemptions from the testing” to manipulate their schools' success rates (Petress, 2006, p. 1). According to a May 7, 2005 CNN special on high-risk testing, one school district held back 40 percent of its third grade students so that the students would not have to implement the important fourth grade achievement test. Some students, however, must be held back more than one year despite the fact that they achieved high classroom marks throughout the year (as cited in Petress, 2006). Because schools often teach only that which is tested - even more so when the stakes are so high - the content of the exams required by No Child Left Behind are the focus of the curriculum at the expense of other subjects, and many people assert that other subjects such as social studies, art, music, and foreign languages are being cut back or even eliminated in favor of reading and mathematics. The Center on Educational Policy found that since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, 71 percent of the nation's school districts had narrowed their curriculum or reduced teaching time in one subject in order to focus more on reading and math (Azzam et al., 2006).

Certain provisions of No Child Left Behind “may make states more cautious about adopting exit exams or setting high pass scores since it requires school districts to demonstrate they are making adequate yearly progress toward the state's student achievement goals. Graduation rates are one of the indicators that states use to determine whether adequate yearly progress is being made” (Chudowsky, Kober, Gayler & Hamilon, 2002, ¶ 2). This could serve as a detriment to introducing a new exit exam if there is fear that implementing a new exit exam or changing requirements could bring down graduation rates (Chudowsky, Kober, Gayler & Hamilon, 2002). Also, “many states have adopted tests that can be constructed quickly and inexpensively. These tests primarily measure low-level skills such as recall and restatement” of fact and ignore higher-level competencies (Toch, 2006, p. 54). A survey by the Public Agenda group reports teachers expressed concern about the No Child Left Behind's implementation with 71 percent saying that students in their schools take too many standardized tests. A minority of school administrators and principals surveyed (44 percent and 42 percent, respectively) think that No Child Left Behind will eventually raise standards and student achievement, and 17 percent of the superintendents and 23 percent of the principals also thought that the law will lead to schools lowering standards so they can more easily show student progress (Azzam et al., 2006).

There are also reasons why students may not do well on any given test day: They could be ill on the day of the test, the room could be oppressively hot or too cool to give the test their full concentration, other students in the classroom could be distracting them, workers could be outside making it difficult to think. These factors, and many others, can affect students' scores and help fuel the debate to have alternative assessment measures in place and not rely on one single assessment measurement to determine students'-and a school and its district's-success.

High School Exit Exams

States have been using high school exit exams since the late 1970s to early 1980s when 11 states began the testing. They were adopted primarily to ensure that students who graduated from high school had the knowledge and skills necessary to go on to college, do well in a job, and succeed in life. However, withholding diplomas is a relatively new concept. There was only one state in the 1980s that withheld diplomas, and two states began withholding diplomas in the 1990s. All other states that withhold high school diplomas began doing so after 1999 ("High School Exit Exams," 2005). Students who otherwise complete all requirements but do not pass the exit examination receive a certificate of achievement, certificate of attainment or certificate of attendance in lieu of receiving a high school diploma.

As of 2006, there are 25 states, plus the District of Columbia, who use high school exit exams. Of these, five do not use the exam for No Child Left Behind standards. Of the 20 states that do, 11 use the same scores for attaining a diploma and No Child Left Behind and nine do not use the same scores ("High School Exit Exams," 2006). For the first time in several years, 2006 marked the first time that no state decided to institute a high school exit exam requirement, although three states began withholding diplomas based on exit exam scores. Eighteen of the 25 states require their schools to offer remediation to children who are unable to achieve satisfactory scores in certain parts of the exam. Six states require that their students attend these programs, and 14 states provide state funding for programs that will support the children. ("No New States," 2006) According to the National Center for Education Statistics, high school graduation rates fell between 1998 and 2001 in the five states that required exit examinations without any alternative performance measurement options. Currently, 19 of the 25 states with high school exit examinations have either developed or are in the process of developing a system that allows other measures to be used in deciding whether to confer a diploma. These measures can include portfolio assessment, grades earned in courses that are tied to their state's standards, ACT and SAT scores, and students' overall exhibition of proficiency. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics also indicates that since the 1990s states that use multiple measures to assess student competency have higher and steadier graduation rates as opposed to those that use high school exit exam as the only determination (Perkins-Gough, 2005).

Proponents of high school exit exams say they improve learning and future employment prospects by giving both students and school districts better incentives to succeed. They also assert that students and teachers will be motivated to work harder and focus on what needs to be learned. Opponents “say the exams needlessly prevent students who have otherwise completed all their coursework from receiving diplomas. They also say that students could drop out of school earlier” if they think they will fail the exam and that the tests discriminate because a disproportionate number of minorities and poor students fail them (Glenn, 2006, ¶ 2). It is impossible to determine whether or not students are dropping out at a higher rate because there are studies that say the dropout rate is increasing due to high school exit examinations, and there are also studies that indicate that states that have high school exit exams do not have higher dropout rates than those states that do not have them.

It is impossible to determine what the ultimate high school exit exam passing percentage rates are because of how students are counted-or not counted. High school students who end up dropping out, repeating a school year, moving away, or being excluded from the exams can skew the numbers. States who report their exit exams record that the percentages of students who passed the first time in a range from 31 to 91 percent in math and from 47 to 95 percent in English/language arts. This means that up to 69 percent of students who took the exit exam in one state failed the mathematics portion and up to 53 percent of students who took the English/language arts section failed on their first attempt. “African American and Hispanic students are less likely to pass on their first attempt than white and Asian students. Passing rates are also lower for poor students, students with disabilities, and students whose first language is not English” (Chudowsky et al., 2002).

Advanced Placement Exams

High school students may take Advanced Placement courses and take an Advanced Placement examination upon completion of the course. Advanced Placement offers high school students the opportunity to earn credit, or advanced standing, at most colleges and universities. The College Board administers the Advanced Placement program, which covers 37 courses and exams that cover 22 subject areas. The exams are graded on a scale of 1 to 5. Students must score a minimum of three in order to demonstrate their mastery of a certain subject. Students do not have to be enrolled in an Advanced Placement course in order to take an exam. This policy was instituted in order to allow home-schooled students and students who are attending schools that do not offer Advanced Placement courses an opportunity to take advantage of the program (Collegeboard.com, n.d.).

According to the College Board, more high school sign up for Advanced Placement classes now than they have in the past, but most students are unable to pass the tests. The number of high school students taking Advanced Placement exams had risen to 23 percent in 2005, up from almost 16 percent in 2000. In the same amount of time, a smaller proportion of test takers received high scores of 3, 4, or 5. In 2000, 64.3 percent of the 405,475 graduating seniors who took Advanced Placement tests received grades of 3 or higher as opposed to 62.1 percent of the 609,807 seniors who studied in 2005 (Farrell, 2006, ¶ 2).

College Entrance & Placement Exams

Standardized college entrance examinations have been widely used in the college admissions process by four-year colleges and universities since the late 1920s. Most two-year community and technical colleges have an 'open door' admissions policy, which means any student who has a high school diploma, GED, or can prove the ability to benefit is admitted as a student. The ACT and SAT are the most well recognized and used college entrance exams. While many community and technical colleges also require students to submit ACT or SAT scores, they are not used to determine whether or not to admit them; instead, they are used to help determine appropriate course placement for entering students. The SAT is administered by the College Board and was first offered in 1901. In the beginning, the SAT was an achievement test designed to determine students' mastery of subjects deemed necessary to succeed in college. During the late 1920s, the SAT was changed to measure a student's aptitude, with the intent of mitigating the advantage wealthier students and those who attended better schools with a more difficult curriculum may have over those who did not have the same advantages. The ACT was created in 1959 and administered by the American College Testing Program, which has since changed its name to ACT, Inc. The ACT's intent is to measure core curriculum areas and is based on academic knowledge traditionally taught in high school college preparatory courses. East Coast and West Coast colleges and universities primarily use the SAT; the ACT is primarily used by colleges and universities in the rest of the country (Education Commission of the States, n.d.).

A major benefit of using college entrance exams is that they are an effective and efficient way to compare students from many different schools and backgrounds, which is of particular importance to larger colleges and universities who must go through literally thousands of applications every semester. Another benefit of using a standardized college entrance exam is that a student's class ranking and grade-point average can vary tremendously based on the size and type of school they attend (large, small, private, public, rigorous curriculum, advanced placement classes, no advanced placement classes, etc.). Some criticism of using standardized exams to determine postsecondary entrance is that they do not accurately reflect a student's abilities and potential to succeed in college and that they can be biased against minorities and low-income students. However, most colleges do not rely solely on the results of college entrance exams. They also look at a student's academic performance, application, essay, outside activities, and recommendations when determining admission.

The non-profit group Achieve conducted an analysis in 2007 of more than 2,000 questions from college admissions and placement exams. They concluded that the questions vary considerably from one another and may not fully measure the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in college. In comparing the two major course placement exams, COMPASS (developed by ACT, Inc.) and Accuplacer (developed by the College Board) with college admissions tests, they found that the college admissions tests were more rigorous than college placement tests but that the reading passages of the placement tests were a more accurate reflection of the types of passages students would see in college. In the writing section, both college admissions and placement tests were found to be more difficult than most high school exams and were indicative of the kind of writing students would be required to do in a college setting (Olson, 2007).

Terms & Concepts

Advanced Placement: College-level courses taught in the high school. High school students may take Advanced Placement exams, and qualifying scores on such exams may result in college credits being granted at the discretion of the individual college or university.

Educational Assessment: The process of determining the amount of information students have retained. Historically, student evaluations are used to determine each child’s individual placement, promotion, graduation, or retention, making sure that each is placed in an appropriate level.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA): The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 was an expansive federal education bill that was passed as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty," with the belief that equal access to education was imperative to a student’s potential to have a successful and generative future.

High School Exit Exams: Tests that students must pass in order to graduate from high school and receive a diploma.

High-Stakes Testing: The use of test scores to make decisions that have important consequences for individuals, schools, school districts, and/or states and can include high school graduation, promotion to the next grade, resource allocation, and instructor retention.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: The latest reauthorization and a major overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the major federal law regarding K-12 education.

Placement Exams: Assessments generally given to incoming college freshmen to help determine which classes should be taken during their first semester or quarter of college. Exams are usually given in mathematics, English, and reading comprehension.

Standardized Testing: The use of a test that is administered and scored in a uniform manner and the tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent.

Bibliography

Azzam, A., Perkins-Gough, D., & Thiers, N. (2006). The impact of NCLB. Educational Leadership, 64 , 94-96. Retrieved May 2, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=23054712&site=ehost-live

Center on Education Policy. (2006). From the Capital to the classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from http://www.cep-dc.org/nclb/Year4/NCLB-Year4Summary.pdf

Chudowsky, N., Kober, N., Gayler, K., & Hamilon, M. (2002). State high school exit exams: A baseline report. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from http://www.cep-dc.org/pubs/statehighschoolexitexams2002/statehighschoolexitexams2002.pdf

Collegeboard.com (n.d.). About AP. Retrieved May 4, 2007 from http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html?print=true

Education Commission of the States. (n.d.). Assessment: College entrance exams. Retrieved May 2, 2007 from http://www.ecs.org/html/issue.asp?issueid=12&subIssueID=75

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (n.d.). Retrieved May 6, 2007 from http://si.unm.edu/si2002/SUSAN_A/TIMELINE/TIM_0015.HTM

Farrell, E. (2006). Advanced-placement test scores drop slightly, report says. Chronicle of Higher Education, 52 , p. A42. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=19837658&site=ehost-live

Glenn, D. (2006). High-school exit exams linked to higher dropout rates, researchers find. Chronicle of Higher Education, 52 , p. A14. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=21750840&site=ehost-live

Gossman, J. (2012). Report finds higher stakes in high school exit exams. (cover story). Education Daily, 45, 1-3. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=82284559&site=ehost-live

Herman, J. L. (2013). Assessing the new Common Core tests. Harvard Education Letter, 29, 8-7. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=88790969&site=ehost-live

High school exit exams: Basic features (2005). Retrieved May 3, 2007 from http://www.cep-dc.org/highschoolexit/ExamMailers/CEPExamMailers.pdf

High school exit exams: Standards differ from the No Child Left Behind Act (2006). Retrieved May 3, 2007 from http://www.cep-dc.org/highschoolexit/ExamMailers/CEPExamMailers4.pdf

Jorgenson, O. (2012). What we lose in winning the test score race. Principal, 91, 12-15. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=75044974&site=ehost-live

Linn, R. (2005). Issues in the design of accountability systems. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 104 , 94-968-92. Retrieved May 2, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=17238819&site=ehost-live

McNeil, M. (2013). Rifts deepen over direction of education policy in U.S. Education Week, 32, 1-16. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=87536985&site=ehost-live

No new states add high school exit exams; Pearson leads in number of testing contracts. Educational Marketer, 37 , 1-4. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=22385029&site=ehost-live

Olson, L. (2007). Caution in use of college-entry tests urged. Education Week, 26 , 5-15. Retrieved May 2, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=24785445&site=ehost-live

Perkins-Gough, D. (2005). The perils of high school exit exams. Educational Leadership, 63 , 90-91. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=18772808&site=ehost-live

Petress, K. (2006). Perils of current testing mandates. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 33 , 80-82. Retrieved May 2, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=20335492&site=ehost-live

Report: High school exit exams becoming standard practice. (2011). What's Working, 3, 10-11. Retrieved December 15, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=58589689&site=ehost-live

Toch, T. (2006). Turmoil in the testing industry. Educational Leadership, 64 , 53-57. Retrieved May 2, 2007 from EBSCO online database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=23054703&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Carnoy, M. (2003). The new accountability: High schools and high-stakes testing Oxford, UK: Routledge-Falmer.

Gayler, K., Chudowsky, N., Hamilton, M., Kober, N., & Yeager, M. (2004). State high school exit exams: A maturing reform. Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy.

Hess, F. & Petrilli, M. (2006). No Child Left Behind. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Peterson, P. & West, M. (2003). No Child Left Behind? The politics and practice of school accountability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.