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View Chicago ISAT Chart Here
Vallas failed to raise Chicago test scores on the test most Illinois
students take
By Sharon Schmidt
 Paul Vallas was never
able to raise Chicago students’ scores on the ISAT Tests, the tests
that public school students take statewide. When he claims to have raised
Chicago test scores “six years in a row,“ he is speaking about
the scores on Iowa and TAP Tests (the tests that Chicago chooses to give).
As explained below, his techniques for raising the Iowa and TAP scores
have been condemned by dozens of test experts from across the country.
Vallas Never Raised Chicago Scores on the Statewide ISAT Tests
Chicago’s students
take two sets of tests every year:
- The Iowa and TAP Tests are administered by the Chicago Public Schools.
Chicago school officials set the ground rules for Iowa and TAP testing.
- The ISAT Tests (the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests) are administered
statewide by the Illinois State Board of Education. Nearly every public
school student in the state must take the ISAT Tests. They reflect state
standards for what students should know and be able to do in third grade
reading, for example. And the questions change every year, so Chicago
school officials do not know in advance what questions will be on this
year’s ISAT Tests.
If Paul Vallas becomes
the “education governor” of Illinois, he will have to raise
the ISAT Test scores. The most important point to remember about Vallas’
Chicago record is that he never succeeded in raising the Chicago’s
ISAT scores, for all the focus he put on test preparation (see
Chart) Here is the chronology:
- February 1999. Chicago students took the ISAT for the first
time. The score were reported in November, and they were very low, compared
with the statewide average (see Chart). Vallas said that Chicago students
were going to do better when they become used to the format of the new
test.
- January-February 2000. As the second ISAT testing approached,
Vallas made a major political issue about the month when the ISAT Test
was going to be given. He claimed that testing students in February
was unfair, even though state achievement tests have been given in this
same time period for a decade. Vallas used the early testing issue to
excuse a second year of dismal Chicago performance when the ISAT scores
were released in November. Wait ‘til next year, he said, when the
ISAT Tests will be given in April.
- April 2001. Students statewide took the ISAT for the third
time. The results were released in November 2001, and they remained
low and completely flat, compared with previous years. The Chicago average
was far below the state average and far below minimum state standards.
As a result, 492 Chicago schools were placed on the state’s Academic
Watch List. However, by the time the scores were released, Vallas was
no longer head of the school system, but off running for governor. The
press didn’t ask him why the change in the month that the ISAT
was given, along with his incessant focus on test preparation, had not
paid off in higher ISAT scores.
Iowa and TAP Test Gains Reflect Unethical Gimmicks
When Vallas took office,
he shrewdly made raising the Iowa Tests in elementary school and the TAP
Tests in high school the obsessive focus for every public school student,
parent, teacher, and principal. He did this in the name of “ending
social promotion,” another politically popular slogan. Raising the
Iowa Tests and TAP Test score results became the only game in town in
the Chicago Public Schools. To raise these scores, Vallas:
- Encouraged constant test-drilling during the regular school day and
after school.
- Made a student’s spring Iowa Test score the basis for promotion
to the next grade at grades three, six, and eight.
- Sent low-scoring students to summer school for another dose of test
drilling and, once again, based promoting or flunking students primarily
on a particular minimum score on the Iowa Test.
- Put schools with low Iowa and TAP Test scores on probation and intensified
test preparation in these schools.
- Put heavy emphasis on Iowa and TAP test gains in evaluating principals.
- Repeatedly used the same three sets of Iowa and TAP Tests over and
over. (Each form had the same identical test items at a particular grade
level.) This practice allowed teachers repeated chances to become familiar
with the exact questions that their students would have to answer on
a particular test (like Form L for fifth grade reading). Vallas used
Form L of the test seven times after he took office.
Test experts regularly
condemned Vallas’ methods. A panel of the National Academy of Sciences
concluded that Chicago’s test gains on the Iowa Test were not valid,
because the Chicago curriculum put such a strong emphasis on preparing
for this particular test. They pointed out that gains on one test for
which students are drilled intensively don’t typically translate
into gains on a similar test (which is exactly what happened with the
ISAT).
Another national group
of nine test experts said in spring 2001 that Chicago’s Iowa Test
was a “broken thermometer,” because the same test questions
were used over and over.
But Vallas learned
that the opinions of such experts attracted limited media attention, as
long as he could hold up a chart that showed a line going up, and say
that he was “ending social promotion.”
Collateral Damage to Children
While politically
popular, Vallas’ policies have done enormous harm to Chicago’s
most neglected students and schools. For example:
- Ruining Students’ Lives. While flunking students with
low test scores sounds like common sense, research has consistently
shown that retained students don’t score higher as a result of
retention and are more likely to drop out later on. The best research-based
alternative is not social promotion or retention, but promotion with
intensive high quality instruction.
Dr. Melissa Roderick of University of Chicago has studied Chicago’s
flunking program and has been reluctant to criticize it. But in a candid
comment she told the American School Board Journal: “The effect
of retention on these kids seems to be very decimating,” Roderick
says, explaining that children who are sent back to repeat a grade have
a much higher dropout rate than children who progress with their classmates.
“This is just a disaster, to be quite honest,” she says. “And
it’s just the beginning of a disaster, because now we’re seeing
all of these first- and second-graders who are being retained.”
Contrary to what many teachers and parents think, Roderick says, “no
research says that early-grade retention is good for kids.”
- Junior High Dropouts. Research indicates that several thousand
additional Chicago students are now dropping out in sixth, seventh,
and eighth grade each year, because they cannot pass the tests to get
into high school. Chicago has no jobs and no future for these children.
- Good Teachers Exit Sanctioned Schools. Research about schools
that have been “taken over” by the central administration
indicates that the best teachers leave, unwilling to put up with the
pressure to drill their students for tests, instead of teach.
Ironically, recent
research in Chicago schools shows that the inner city schools where students
do better on both the Iowa and ISAT are teaching a challenging educational
program, rather that drilling students for tests.
But what’s harmful
for children has been very good for Paul Vallas.
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