We bash Common Core and the SBAc test because we think they are severely flawed. That hasn’t changed. However, to be fair, we want to present all views of the SBAc test results we can find. When we posted our article on the 2016/17 results someone got in touch and asked why the students weren’t followed year-over-year. That is, 3rd grade becomes 4th grade becomes 5th grade, etc.
Well, there is enough data to follow students for three (3) years so we went back and pulled that data. In the chart below we show the ELA and Math test scores for those who we have 3 years (the max) of data. When we look at this what do we see?
Following the students gives a different impression of the scores/results:
- The numbers, for many of the groups, show growth (improvement) from the 1st year of the test to the 3rd year. If you are the optimist they you say the students are improving. If you are a pessimist then you say that the improved scores are due to children learning how to take this new test on computers and that the “practice” time spent preparing for the test is paying off. (If you are being told they don’t practice for the test you are being misled)
So, what do we take away from this?
- Subtracting the “passing” scores in these charts from 100 you see that a HUGE number of students are failing
SBAC_WA_State_3yr_tracking_agingup
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