Universities Push to Influence State Tests for High-School Students

Higher-education officials investigate using tests in admissions and placement

By SARA HEBEL

As states increasingly develop exit tests and other assessments of high-school achievement, a group representing 14 prominent research universities is seeking a voice in the discussions

ALSO SEE: Entering the Debate Over State Testing

to ensure that students' preparation for college isn't lost in the process.

Members of the group, which includes administrators and faculty and staff members who teach or counsel freshmen, plan to meet six times over the next four months to agree on a set of skills needed by freshmen at research institutions. The project, dubbed Standards for Success, will also create a user's guide to current state assessments so that selective colleges can use students' scores on some of the assessments in admissions, placement, and perhaps scholarship decisions.

The project is financed by a $1.2-million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts that is being coordinated by the Association of American Universities, a group of 61 research universities. All of the participating institutions, which each pay $60,000 toward the project, are members of the association.

Nineteen states already require their high-school students to pass a test before graduating, and eight more plan to do so. Every state but Iowa requires their high-school students to undergo some form of statewide assessment. President Bush also is fueling the movement with education proposals that would use the results of state tests to determine federal financing for schools.

Higher-education officials who are participating in the Pew project have differing views on how rigorous state assessments should be, and on how often states should require high-school students to take the tests. They share a goal, though, of encouraging states and schools that do use tests or other assessments to strive for high-quality exams that measure the skills and knowledge essential for succeeding in college.

"If this standards movement is going to be an effective approach across the board, it has to be informed by what the best colleges expect," says James W. England, a program officer in education for the Pew Charitable Trusts. "State assessments need to be reviewed in light of those expectations."

The state testing movement itself has stirred much controversy, especially in places where passing a test stands between students and their diplomas.

Many teachers resent having to teach students only the skills and information they need to pass a particular test. And some students and parents oppose the extraordinary levels of pressure placed on students to pass a single exam in order to graduate.

Students with learning disabilities also have struggled to pass the tests in some states. Last week, the state of Oregon settled a lawsuit that was brought two years ago by a disability-rights group and five public-school students with learning disabilities who claimed that the state assessment tests discriminated against them. Oregon agreed to let learning-disabled students who are entitled to use accommodations in the classroom use those same accommodations on statewide tests, and to refrain from denying those students diplomas solely on the basis of their test scores.

In the face of controversies, some states that were scheduled to require high-stakes tests in high school are now backing off or softening their approach.

Last month, for example, North Carolina's Board of Education delayed by one year a new requirement that students pass a statewide test to earn a diploma. Alaska and Arizona are considering similarly delaying exit exams that are scheduled to be put in place in 2002, and Alabama and Maryland already have pushed back their time lines for establishing new exit tests.

In California, meanwhile, the State Board of Education agreed to shorten a required exam for graduating seniors, and eliminate some tough math questions. Ohio officials are considering replacing high-school exit tests with end-of-course assessments.

The officials involved in the standards project say that for the nation's colleges to play a more productive role in developing fair and effective tests, they first have to make clear the specific knowledge base they demand of their freshmen. Although the current project is only open to research institutions, leaders of the effort plan to prepare grant proposals to finance similar efforts involving state-college systems and community colleges down the road.

The first meeting for participants in the project was held last week at the University of Oregon. In that meeting and others scheduled for the next few months, faculty members and other instructors from the participating institutions will spell out what skills and knowledge it would take to earn at least a C+ in entry-level classes in core subject areas.

"We want to state university expectations in a way that does go beyond any institution and any state," says David T. Conley, director of the Standards for Success project and an associate professor of education policy at the University of Oregon. "For the first time, we will translate these things out of the abstract and really be saying what we want students to be able to do."

At the meetings, instructors and professors will bring annotated samples of work by freshmen to illustrate what they expect from incoming students.

Mark D. Meritt, a graduate student at Oregon who teaches freshman composition, attended the first Standards for Success meetings. He marked up an essay to show how a student used concrete examples and clear reasoning to directly answer questions that the instructor had posed.

He became involved with the standards project, he says, to help communicate to high schools that many students need to be better prepared. Standardized tests, he argues, generally don't do an effective job of measuring whether a student is mastering the process of writing; he hopes that detailing college expectations will help encourage schools to focus more on imparting skills that go beyond those needed to pass state assessments.

When teaching freshmen, Mr. Meritt and his colleagues "are often surprised at what things can't be taken for granted," he says.

Some students have had no idea how to cite a passage in their essays; one didn't know what the term "passage" meant. "I think it's fairly easy to come up with very basic criteria for clear college writing," he says.

Once project participants settle on a common set of expectations -- a task they hope to complete within a year -- a summary of those expectations will be distributed to high-school guidance counselors, students, and parents. Mr. Conley says he will send CD-ROM's and brochures to each of the nation's 110,000 high schools.

Project members also plan to provide the information to the U.S. Department of Education and national groups, such as the Council of Chief State School Officers. Project participants may also meet with state officials, legislators, and school administrators who develop testing policies.

Mr. Conley readily acknowledges possible limits on the project's reach. Teachers often are reluctant to change their teaching methods to meet standards set by outsiders, he notes. And he fears that the schools that are most likely to seize on the new information are those already geared toward college preparation.

But "universities haven't been at the table in any systematic fashion," he says. "We want to try to make sure there is some alignment that exists between what state systems are doing and what universities are doing."

Wayne Martin, director of the state education assessment center at the Council of Chief State School Officers, says he and other school officials are excited that universities are becoming more involved in setting standards.

"There hasn't traditionally been an articulation between what goes on in high schools and what colleges think they want," he says. "We need to have the same common destination."

The expectations set by the research universities for freshmen will eventually be matched against a database that Stanford researchers are compiling of what current assessments states are using. The researchers are receiving help from Achieve, a nonprofit group formed by governors and business executives who support policies that promote high academic standards.

"There is a great deal of information coming online about students that is complementary and often deeper than the ACT and the SAT," says Michael W. Kirst, a professor of education at Stanford who is working on the standards project. "Selective schools want all the information they can get about applicants. We want to help admissions officers and policy makers understand state assessments."

Detailed information about how tests are conducted (Does a math-proficiency test allow a student to use a calculator?) and the level being tested (Does it include calculus problems, or merely test algebraic skills?) would help admissions officers know whether a test indicates college readiness, project leaders say.

They also hope that knowing more about tests might allow an institution to use some states' assessments as alternatives or supplements to its own placement examinations. In some states, such as Massachusetts and New York, institutions already use their own state tests in making certain decisions about what level of courses a student must take.

Mr. Conley also says that universities might begin making decisions about merit-based aid by using scores on tests that are endorsed by the project as effectively measuring high achievement. Many current university and state-based merit-scholarship programs award money based on grade-point average and class rank, which encourages grade inflation and creates an adverse incentive for students to take easy classes, Mr. Conley argues.

However, Stanford researchers say other studies they have done indicate that some state tests probably won't be as relevant for colleges as others, because they assess mostly basic skills.

For instance, the tests now being used in Texas set a low ceiling for academic proficiency, say Mr. Kirst and Andrea Venezia, another Stanford researcher involved in the Pew project. Students need only eighth-grade skills to pass the current exit exam.

But states with higher-level tests -- such as Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington -- measure proficiency in ways that could help colleges learn more details about an applicant's college readiness than class rank and the SAT or ACT, they add.

Researchers for the standards project are intent, though, on not assuming that a test is a good tool simply because it measures high-level achievement. For example, Arizona's new test requires students to show a "very high level" of academic ability, according to the Stanford researchers. But the state's assessment policy has outraged some parents and students who say that high-school curricula are not aligned with the tests and that the assessments are too rigorous, Ms. Venezia notes.

"We want to be careful," she says, "not to create a situation where we are advocating for a particular test -- or making it even higher stakes."

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