Measuring student achievement is messy

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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Student test scores have received more attention since Congress approved the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. Certainly, test scores are useful and necessary in evaluating student achievement.

But they also can be deceiving or incomplete in measuring how well our young people learn and what they learn. Iowa is no exception.

Consider the widely used ACT college-entrance exams. Iowa seniors consistently rank high compared to other states where more than half of the students take the ACT. For spring 2010 grads, Iowa ranked No. 2 with a composite score of 22.2. The Cedar Rapids district was even higher at 24.3. Sounds pretty good. Look deeper.

Only 30 percent of the 22,943 Iowa students who took the ACT met benchmarks indicating they were ready for college-level courses in math, reading, science and English. Which means 70 percent didn't. And keep in mind that about 16,000 other seniors didn't even take the ACT exam. No wonder college officials often complain about the number of freshmen who need remedial courses.

Cedar Rapids' ACT composite scores have risen fairly steadily since the district's 2001 seniors scored 23.0. The percentage of seniors taking the exam has fluctuated little during the past 10 years. Meanwhile, the percentage of the district's seniors who come from low-income homes - tied to the number of those eligible for free or reduced-lunch programs - soared from 14.7 percent to 35.4 percent during the same decade. Cedar Rapids also compares favorably to seven other like-sized, Midwest districts that belong to a benchmarking consortium: second in ACT composite while having by far the highest percentage of low-income students.

Something to be proud of? To a point.

One problem in trying to compare apples to apples is that the number of low-income seniors taking the ACT exam isn't in the data.

A better indicator of how well our students are doing is the National Assessment of Educational Progress - the largest continuing measure in several subject areas. The latest Nation's Report Card, for the first time, compared scientific samples of seniors in reading and math among states; 11 states, including Iowa, joined the pilot program.

In reading, Iowa tied for fifth with 35 percent graded as proficient. In math, Iowa was sixth at 24 percent - which likely means that proficiency among Iowa students may be little or no better than average nationwide - perhaps not surprising as the proficiency standards Iowa uses in state testing for No Child Left Behind requirements are lower than in many states.

All of this testing data gets confusing. But collectively, it lends credence to the movement for national educational standards.

We'd also suggest: Track high school graduates' performance in postsecondary education and their job-hunting success. Those measures count a lot in life.