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CSAP Usefulness Grade: D-: Scrap it

Tuesday, March 13 at 12:00 AM

This Speakout has not been edited

By Janelle Jones, Highlands Ranch

CSAP Usefulness Grade: D-: Scrap it for more useful testing methods

"Get plenty of rest. Don't be absent. Bring a nutritional snack and lunch."

Shouldn't the above be no-brainer activity for all school days, not just during CSAP testing? Yet every year at this time, it's the mantra sent home to parents and repeated to students in Colorado public school classrooms.

To quell their CSAP anxiety, I used to tell my kids, "relax, it's just to see how much you've learned and where we may need to work on a few things. CSAPs are important but don't count on your grades." That's misinformation, especially with older students.

CSAPs actually determine placement in high school honors classes and at our K-8 school, are also part of the determining factor in initial ability grouping for the following fall. For instance, with respect to the high school placement for writing, our high school cannot use our 8th grader's most recent test results because such will not be available until August --- so his SEVENTH grade CSAP information will be used to help gauge his language arts placement for his FRESHMAN year. Ridiculous. Educators and parents of teens and tweens will attest, the amount of academic growth (and in some instances decline) is tremendous during that two year period.

For younger students, CSAP is equally useless information gathering. What happens when an A/B student is found to have poor skills in a given area per the CSAP test? If the latter is accurate, the snail's pace at which the results are available negates any opportunity for challenged students to work over the summer to catch up to average or higher performing peers in time for the next school year.

Worse, teachers do not benefit from the information either. If CSAP results could be made available by at least school year's end, teachers could assess instances of poor performance and make recommendations for individual improvement or evaluate potential instruction/curriculum adjustments in preparation for the upcoming school year. Learning the results in August leaves no time to adjust for the incoming students.

While it is worthwhile to gain a picture of how Colorado students are performing against one another, what do CSAPs show with respect to nationwide performance? CSAPs appear to be an identification to aid only the lowest performing schools --- and not individual students. The tests do not serve middle or high level performers in any way.

For most schools, and most importantly individual student growth and our teachers, CSAPs are useless and a tremendous waste of instructional time. If we are going to dedicate so much of our resources to CSAPs, shouldn't we make such useful too? Better yet, scrap the whole CSAP enchilada in favor of testing that actually aids student progress (perhaps NWEA, Aimsweb, ITBS).

READER COMMENTS

Fine,
Let's evaluate schools and teachers by how well the students do over the next 2 or 3 years after they graduate. Schools with students that graduate and do well in college or the working world get passing grades. Those schools with graduates that turn into derelicts and drains on society get closed or restructured.

Posted by on March 13, 2007 05:07 PM