Ohio\'s Third Grade Reading Guarantee Assessment

Corinna Ross September 22, 2014
Brief #4: Ohio's Third Grade Reading Guarantee Assessment

Policy implementation challenges like policy setting, communication, and horseshoe-nail problems are represented in the polarized No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB required a 100% proficiency goal for state education of "all tested students on grade level in reading and math by 2014." By 2012, half of the states across the country filed requests for a "waiver" to some of these goals: They can establish "more realistic proficiency goals" which include guiding funds to poorly-performing districts, developing new assessment tools for educators and implementing an "accountability system" (http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/tag/no-child-left-behind/). In 2010, President Obama (and his policy setting change) presented a series of reform measurements with Blueprint of Reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), while NCLB was still awaiting congressional reauthorization. 41 states, including Ohio, have applied for ESEA flexibility to develop plans improving outcomes and teaching quality while closing achievement gaps.
Implementation of ESEA in Ohio and several other states (organizational disunity represented by different measures for the achieving the same objectives) brought increased mandatory testing as the primary assessment tool for success—of our students, our teachers, and our schools. Offered twice during the regular academic year to third graders (age 8-10), testing is over two-hours of continuous sitting, with no verbal instruction allowed, no talking is permitted, and 2 five-minute monitored bathroom breaks allowed. Procedures for the test and assessment tools are clearly delineated. Communication with parents occurs to explain the OAA test and its purpose through group meetings, letters, and phone calls. These students understand the seriousness of the test.
Dispersal of information through the organization of administrators and teachers can be tense and difficult; teachers know their students have learned more than tests can display in numbers. Teachers have no choice—limited contact time and serious consequences insist teaching to the test with repetitive practice portions. Instead of being allowed to really engage their students and fostering a love of learning, teachers are being measured-as are the children-by this test.
These assessment tests don't consider poverty level, or sleep the previous night, or familial stability, or mental disability, or even teaching methodology (immersion schools). Tests measure only results, snapshots of a year. The Horsehoe-Nail Problem to which G. Peters refers shown with incompleteness, no classroom assessment of our children or our teachers, no questionnaire for parents or teachers, and limited availability of testing. Tests consider only one method of mapping and measuring growth. Not all children learn the same way, not all children can be measured the same way.
These mandatory, standardized tests instill paranoia in our children, fear in our parents, and stress in our teachers and are an incomplete picture of any given student's actual improvement. Studies have even discussed negative impacts of holding children back even a single grade: lower graduation rate, increased behavioral problems, increased addiction problems, and lower average income levels (http://www.greatschools.org/students/4150-repeating-a-grade.gs). How long will it be before we can understand the ramifications of holding back this many third-grade students year-after-year?