A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

Mapping Out the National Assessment of Title I: the Interim Report - 1996

Section 2:
Reform through Linking Title I to Challenging Academic Standards

What the New Provisions Are

A recent report of the National Academy of Education summarizes the educational purpose of standards-based reforms:

Standards-based reform developed out of the common-sense notion that student effort and level of achievement are directly affected by the expectations that have been set. Thus, standards-based reform calls for the setting of standards in academic subject areas as an important means of improving student achievement. Once agreed upon, standards are expected to affect performance by focusing the efforts of students, teachers, and schools and by providing a yardstick to monitor progress (McLaughlin, Shepard, & O'Day, 1995, p. 1).

These same assumptions support the use of challenging standards in Title I, which bases policy and practice on rigorous content standards and linked assessments. The new Title I aims to improve program services by focusing on the same challenging academic standards for Title I students that states establish for the education of all students. This link between Title I and high state standards is intended to move schools and districts away from a concentration on low-level remediation and toward a new focus on academic excellence. Under the new law, funding provided by Title I and other sources is designed to be used to provide Title I students and schools with the extra time and services they need to meet new expectations for high achievement adopted by the state and local schools.

New Title I provisions for states' Title I plans explicitly link program services with each state's standards and policies for what students should know and be able to do. The plan that each state submits to the U.S. Department of Education must demonstrate that these standards are in place or scheduled to be in place. Each state is responsible for establishing its own standards and documenting that the standards are challenging.

Content and performance standards. The new law requires that each state participating in Title I adopt challenging content standards in academic subjects as well as high standards for student performance, taking into account that states differ in operating their schools. These standards must apply equally to Title I schools and other schools and to Title I students and other students. If a state has not established standards for all students by the beginning of the 1997-98 school year or does not intend to develop them, it must develop content and performance standards for children participating in Title I, Part A programs. These state-adopted standards must reflect the same knowledge, skills, and performance levels that are expected of all children, and must cover at least mathematics and reading/language arts.

Title I permits states to exercise broad discretion in determining their standards, subject only to a few general criteria:

The state's content standards must specify what children are expected to know and be able to do. They must cover rigorous content and encourage the teaching of basic and advanced skills.

Performance standards must be aligned with the state's content standards. They must set two levels of performance--proficient and advanced--to describe expectations for students' mastery of the knowledge and skills described in the content standards. States must also set a third level of performance--partially proficient--to describe students' progress as they move toward achievement at the proficient and advanced levels.

Assessments. The new Title I requires states to adopt or develop student assessments in the same academic areas as their content and performance standards. The assessments, which will be used to measure the yearly progress of Title I students, schools, and districts, must address at least reading/language arts and mathematics, and must be in place by school year 2000-01. States that do not develop their own assessments must adopt an assessment used by another state that has its Title I plan in place.

States will use their assessment instruments and procedures to measure progress at some time during each cluster of grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12. The assessments used for Title I purposes must also reflect the following characteristics:

The assessments must be the same ones used for all children, if the state measures the performance of all children.

They must be aligned with state content and performance standards.

They must be valid and reliable for the purpose for which they are used.

The assessments may be adapted to provide for the participation and inclusion of all children, including those who have disabilities, have limited-English proficiency, are transient, or are children of migrant agricultural workers.

The assessments must allow student performance results to be reported for each state, school district, and school by gender, racial/ethnic group, disability, and low-income status. They must also permit individual student reports to be generated.

During the period before 2000-01 states may use temporary, transitional assessment instruments and procedures, which must be capable of measuring complex skills and challenging subject matter as well as basic skills. However, the transitional assessments do not need to be capable of providing the types of disaggregated data required in the final assessments.

What the National Assessment of Title I Has Learned

Status of standards development. Current research indicates varied approaches and experiences among states as they adopt and implement academic standards. While much of the research focuses on states' establishment of standards, some information is now available on the quality and use of standards.

The challenges encountered in establishing standards differ by subject. In mathematics, for example, the decade-long consensus process undertaken by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to develop standards created a level of understanding and acceptance about new teaching practices and higher levels of achievement. In reading, however, that level of agreement and understanding has yet to be reached. Therefore, states may need to spend more time and resources on some subjects and not others. The absence of agreement among experts and professionals may lead to special problems for Title I because most Title I students receive reading instruction, and the development of reading standards and assessments is required for states receiving Title I funds.

Standards also differ in many other respects. They may cover detailed academic content within subjects or be limited to general topics to be addressed in instruction. In addition, standards may incorporate particular instructional philosophies, such as performance of group activities or hands-on math and science activities. Because of these differences, simple measures of the status of state-adopted standards run the risk of oversimplification. Instead, sensitive analyses must take into account the multiple dimensions that standards currently address and the flexibility that states have to address standards in unique ways.

Some key findings on states' standards development include the following:

Most states are developing standards, although fewer states have actually adopted final standards. According to a recent American Federation of Teachers' (AFT) survey, 49 states have or are developing content standards in core academic areas.

According to the Council of Chief State School Officers' (CCSSO) State Education Assessment Center (1995b), in August 1995, 25 states reported having math standards ready to implement, 23 had science standards, and 20 had English or language arts standards. Most other states were in the process of developing content standards.

The extent to which standards qualify as challenging or internationally comparable is unclear. According to the AFT's analysis and criteria used to make those judgments, seven states have used international benchmarking to assess and refine their standards. In addition, in AFT's opinion 13 states have adopted standards that are "strong enough to carry the weight of reforms being built upon them." It should be noted, however, that several states disagree with those conclusions.

The development of standards requires consensus building, which often takes considerable time. Early standards-setting states found that it takes three to five years for standards setting to move from state legislation, to the development of consensus by teachers, parents, businesses, and institutions of higher education to implementation. At the end of that period, standards exist but assessments, implementation activities, and professional development are just being planned.

The Process of Standards Development

Delaware

New Directions for Education in Delaware is a broad partnership of key stakeholders throughout the state--the Governor, the General Assembly, local boards and superintendents, the teacher's union, the Delaware Association of School Administrators, the state parent/teacher association, and all the public institutions of higher education. These stakeholders have established four educational priorities to guide state and local efforts: standards and curriculum, assessments and instruction, capacity building and local implementation, and partnerships.

Standards and assessments are at the heart of New Directions. Curriculum framework commissions composed of 45 members have established content and performance standards in English/language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. The content standards were developed for four benchmark points--K-3, 4-5, 6-8, and 9-10. Each commission was given timelines within which to frame content and student performance standards over a three-year period. While each of the commissions worked differently, they all examined international, national, and state standards in their respective disciplines. Thousands of draft copies of the standards have been circulated for comment by teachers, parents, and citizens.

(Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 1995a)

Status of assessment development. Most states have not developed or adopted assessment systems that are aligned with their standards. However, some states are using high-quality assessments based on state-endorsed curricula, even though they may not have yet developed content or performance standards. Specifically, the National Assessment of Title I found that:

Thirty-five states include performance assessments (e.g., writing samples, constructed-response items, or portfolios), among their reform activities, according to the Education Commission of the States' report, State-Level K-12 Education Reform Activities (Medler, 1994), which tracks state education reforms in all 50 states.

As of 1993-94, 45 states had some sort of statewide assessment program. Nebraska is developing its first assessment program, scheduled for implementation before 1998, and Colorado and Massachusetts suspended their statewide testing programs while they develop new ones. Only Wyoming and Iowa have no statewide assessment program. Writing samples are the most common form of assessment; 38 states use them. Thirty-two states report using norm-referenced assessments, 25 states use performance-based assessments, and seven states use portfolios (CCSSO & North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1995).

Several states use curriculum-driven assessments even though they do not have state curriculum standards. Such states include Kentucky, which has adopted primary- and secondary-grade assessments for all students, and New York, whose Regents exam is a long-standing, high-stakes test of achievement in specific subject areas and is used to recognize superior performance on the high school diploma.

The Council of Chief State School Officers also reports that 36 states exempt students with limited-English-proficiency from the statewide assessments required of their English-speaking peers. Twenty-two of these states use the length of time a student has been in a bilingual/ESL program as a guide to determine when a student should be required to take assessments in English. The length of time varies from one to three years.

State-Developed Assessment Systems

Kentucky

Student achievement is tested annually by the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS), a performance-based assessment system implemented for the first time in spring 1992. KIRIS tests fourth, eighth, and eleventh graders in a three-part assessment that includes multiple-choice and short-essay questions, performance tasks requiring students to solve practical and applied problems, and portfolios through which students present the "best" examples of classroom work collected throughout the school year. KIRIS is the heart of the Kentucky accountability program. Results from the state assessment are combined with other important measures, such as attendance and graduation rates, to produce school and district scores on a 140-point accountability index. Schools are expected to rise on the index by a certain percent every two years to meet an improvement goal. The assessment is new and continually revised to improve its validity, reliability, and general usefulness.

Maryland

The Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP), which measures student achievement, is part of the state's systemic reform initiative to improve performance. The MSPAP has three major components: criterion-referenced tests, administered in grades three, five, and eight, which include performance-based tasks and a writing assessment to measure knowledge in core subjects; a norm-referenced assessment, CTBS/4, taken by a small sample of students in each district; and high-school functional tests in reading, math, writing, and citizenship, administered in grade seven. Students are required to pass the high-school functional tests before receiving a diploma and may retake them as needed. The 1992 data from these reports were used to set state standards in math, reading, writing, language usage, science, and social studies. Those data now form the baseline for measuring continuing progress among schools in the state.

Performance Criteria for the National Assessment
of Title I

Two indicators in Title I track the expected development of standards and assessments and their implementation in classrooms:

By 1995-96, states will show progress in developing and implementing high standards to improve teaching and learning for all students in at least reading/language arts and math.

The content and performance standards will be challenging, according to accepted benchmarks, such as voluntary national, international, or recognized state standards.

Yet the complexity surrounding the standard-setting process makes the prospects for standards adoption and implementation unclear. A realistic reading of the pace of education standards development suggests that many states may not have standards and their aligned assessments in place for some years to come. It seems likely that:

States will find setting standards and aligning assessments at the schools and classroom level a continuing challenge with some fits and starts as they move through the development and implementation cycle.

Title I programs will implement the standards-based framework differently depending on the developmental status of their state's standards and assessment systems.

Local communities will move through their own process as they formulate their own standards that achieve a balance between addressing the specific needs of their own students and communities and using their state's standards.

These grass-roots changes will occur in a way that produces a continually improving process of standards and assessment development and refinement, in which states and communities benefit from the experience of others.

Plans for Evaluating Progress

Evaluation of standards and assessments will rely heavily on the synthesis of information from the work of researchers and evaluators who are examining effective education improvement and reforms in general. Specific issues pertaining to how Title I schools and school systems operate within the context of increasing standards will be the primary focus of the evaluations conducted for the NATI. These issues include the extent to which content standards and aligned assessments are developed, the status of school reforms, early implementation of Goals 2000: Educate America Act and ESEA, and initial indicators of the impact of federal support to upgrade student performance.

Several major, large-scale sources of information on state and local standards development will inform the NATI:

Updates on progress in developing and implementing standards and assessments will be obtained from the CCSSO Goals 2000 and other state surveys, AFT quality surveys, Office of Vocational and Adult Education occupational skills standards projects, and federally funded content standards and curriculum framework development projects.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will conduct major reviews of the math and science curriculum and assessment reforms in states participating in NSF's Statewide Systemic Initiative, Urban Systemic Initiative, and Rural Systemic Initiative.

The National Governors' Association's case studies of standards development in four states (expected in December 1996) will provide insights into the development process.

The CCSSO Curriculum and Instructional Improvement Project will provide a forum for discussing progress in these areas among national organizations.

Several groups will focus particularly on assessments, including: CCSSO's tracking of state assessment development and the study of state assessment systems being conducted jointly by CCSSO and the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory; policy and cost studies by the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing that examine the implementation of four state assessment systems in local schools and classrooms; and a two-year study of state assessment programs and related state standard-setting activities by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE).

The NATI, in conjunction with other federal evaluation efforts, will supplement the more general studies with information on specific issues related to implementation of federal legislation. Specifically:

The Baseline Fast Response Survey of Schools will determine current awareness about and status of school reforms, including the use of standards and aligned assessments, the implementation of Goals 2000 and Title I, and state and local reform. The survey of principals and teachers will examine their perceptions of the impact of changing and raising standards on their schools and classrooms. Teachers will also be asked about their own confidence in their ability to teach to high standards. Data from this survey will be available in the fall of 1996 from the National Center for Education Statistics.

A Study of States' Planning and Early Implementation of Goals 2000: Educate America Act and ESEA will address standard-setting, assessments, and alignment issues. It will ask about states' definition of adequate yearly progress, the transitional assessments that they are using, and the characteristics of students participating in assessments. Data will be available in late 1996.

The Longitudinal Evaluation of School Change and Performance will examine the cumulative impact of standards-based reform in Title I and other federal support on improving student performance. This study will also examine the factors contributing to alignment and the relationship of aligned curriculum, professional development, and assessments to student achievement. Preliminary data will be available in 1998.
The new evaluation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress--conducted by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)--and the continued work of the NAS Board on Testing and Assessment (BOTA) of the National Research Council, will address several issues related to Title I. For example, they will examine the utility of NAEP for cross-state comparisons, its alignment to state content standards, and its possible applications in measuring progress under Title I. Technical reports will be available annually for a three-year period beginning in late 1996.

-###-

[Section 1: Baseline Information on Student Performance and Title I Participants]

[Section 3: Focus on Teaching and Learning Title I Support for Enriching Curriculum and Instruction]