A testing enigma

Looking at the latest round of Illinois school report cards, No Child Left Behind remains an enigma for judging classroom performance. A majority of Lake County school districts failed to make adequate yearly progress, based on annual Illinois State Achievement Test scores. Statewide, it's not much better. These annual results may not show off the fine jobs students and teachers do in classrooms across the county, but fair or not, this is how students and teachers are being judged. By the state, by the feds, by parents.

According to this year's results released Friday, 25 of 46 county school districts did not make AYP state standards this year. And next year, the figures should be worse because the bar continues to be raised annually.

Can most of these districts be doing that bad? We don't think so. But what data do we have to disprove that? Testing data says otherwise, if you believe there's a correlation between testing and learning. Certainly, other factors need to be taken into account, including if testing translates into good schools.

Some districts' decisions on curriculum, teaching and learning are driven by the tests. They become engaged in practice testing for the Illinois State Achievement Test. Prizes are offered during ISAT exercises.

Then again, some believe our state elementary school tests are too easy. A new federal study evaluated fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading tests in all states and ranked them according to their rigor. The passing bars for Illinois' tests ranked near the bottom, especially in math. Just three states had eighth-grade math tests that were easier to pass.

This means Illinois students get to look good without actually doing well. Experts in Illinois have long suspected these inflated standards, particularly after the state changed its testing procedures in 2006. There is a move to toughen up the tests, which could change at the earliest by 2013. That means your eighth-grader may look like he's doing well on the tests, but maybe he's not.

The testing aspect of the No Child Left Behind Act may not be perfect, but the real failing is in the funding. Money dedicated to education can buy extra teachers and extra tutors for students who need more concentrated studies. Money can buy summer school for students who need extra attention. Money can buy extra computers and the networks needed to make them useful.

Somebody dropped the money ball. It needs to be picked up. With that, the future may see not only raised test scores, but real learning.