Exam ‘very difficult,’ state school chief says
Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Arkansas Education Commissioner Ken James on Monday defended Arkansas’ Benchmark and End-of-Course exams against suggestions made by the U. S. Department of Education that the tests given to more than half of the state’s students every year may be too easy.
“I’m convinced that our examination has been and continues to be a very difficult examination,” James said in an interview after Monday’s meeting of the state Board of Education.
The federal Department of Education recently sent James notice that approval of the state’s standards and assessment program was “pending” and, as a result, the state is subject to “mandatory oversight” of some federal administrative grant money. That money — as much as $ 188, 000 — could be withheld from the state agency if it fails to comply with a timeline due July 25 for correcting the deficiencies that the federal government sees in the testing system. The corrections have to be done by the end of 2006-07.
The federal department gave as one of its main reasons for holding up approval “outstanding concerns with the lack of item complexity on all assessments.” The state was directed to provide “evidence that the tests measure higher-order thinking skills and student understanding of challenging content.” State off icials will seek clarification from the federal agency about the testing concerns, James said. The response to the queries may determine whether the state files any kind of appeal.
Similar federal letters sent to other states about their assessments have produced “a great deal of concern and there will be quite a few — at least from what I’m hearing out in the field — there will be several appeals,” he said.
Testing programs in only four states — Maryland, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia — have been fully approved. Others have been told to expect approval or that they’ve been approved but improvements are suggested. Approval is pending in 33 states, including Arkansas. Testing programs in Maine and Nebraska have been disapproved.
James suggested that some of the concerns stem from the federal government’s use of peer review teams — expert panels — to review the testing programs in each state. The use of different teams produced inconsistent evaluations.
The team that evaluated Arkansas’ program in February did not mention concerns about the difficulty levels of the state tests nor did they say Arkansas needed to evaluate whether its alternative test for special education students is aligned with state education standards. Both concerns showed up in the federal Education Department’s letter.
“The bottom line to us is we are not overly concerned about getting to where we need to be,” James said. “We think our tests measure up very well. We’ll send them the necessary data that we’ve got that shows the complexity of our assessment.”
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