Shorter MSA tests raise questions

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Maryland School Assessments are tests given to students in grades 3 through 8 in the areas of math and reading as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Students and school systems reach to achieve set standards on these tests in order to test proficient or better.

Results are recorded for students reaching proficient level, those reaching higher and those who scored below proficient. These results are also broken down by subgroup such as race, gender, special education students and students who meet requirements to receive free and reduced price meals (FARM)and more.

Calvert County was no stranger to increased levels of proficiency as the county has continued to raise proficiency levels since the beginning of the MSAs in 2003.

This year, however, Calvert County had some impressive spikes in proficiency, some spikes in the double digits in subgroups such as FARM and African American students.

Speculation first came out of Baltimore when similar groups and numbers as a whole tended to be higher than the years before.

The Maryland State Department of Education released information that this years test was indeed shorter than years prior as this year schools eliminated the non-referenced test (NRT) previously taken by students before the start of the MSA for reading and the MSA for math.

According to an e-mail from Ronald A. Peiffer, deputy state superintendent of academic policy, a handful of the NRT test questions were used for the MSA in order to help record results in 2003. Peiffer said the state no longer needed the questions from the NRT and was able to replace the few questions with multiple choice questions written in Maryland.

Peiffer said that these questions were low level multiple choice but were of the same difficulty as those questions seen on the NRT.

‘‘The difficulty was absolutely the same,” Peiffer told a reporter. ‘‘If dropping this portion of the test would have made it easier, then you would have seen an uptick in the results, but we didn’t see that.”

The total amount of time taken from each test, according to Peiffer, was a half hour for reading and a half hour for math.

In looking at Calvert County figures, increases in various subgroups have increased but not significantly across all subgroups for all grades.

For example, Plum Point Middle School showed African-American students scoring 62.5percent proficient or better in sixth grade math last year. This group hit 90 percent proficient or better this year. This year additional subgroups reported raised percentages while others showed negligible results of a percentage point or two.

Ted Haynie, director of system performance for Calvert County, attributed the increased results in particular grades and subgroups not to a shorter test, but to the attention the school system is placing on students in need of improvement. In an earlier interview, Haynie said each year principals come together and provide the Calvert County Board of Education with what they feel their schools greatest need of improvement is. For a majority of the 24 schools, the greatest area of need was in the area of special education and for many of the middle schools, the greatest area of need was math. Seventh grade math was one area that increased significantly for Calvert.

According to information from the Maryland State Department of Education provided to The Calvert Recorder by Haynie, the replacement of the few test questions were the only changes made to the MSA.

‘‘The results are valid and accurate,” read a memo from the Maryland State Department of Education.