Online Testing — Part 6: Higher Achievement Standards
Read other installments in our series on Online Testing.
- Online Testing — Part 1: A New Era for Hawaii Student Assessment
- Online Testing — Part 2: More Chances, Flexibility
- Online Testing — Part 3: Immediate Results
- Online Testing — Part 4: Test Will Be Tailored to Each Student’s Academic Abilities
- Online Testing — Part 5: More Accurate Results
- Online Testing — Part 6: Higher Achievement Standards
- Online Testing — Part 7: Higher Tech, Lower Cost
The Hawaii State Assessment is going online this year and will be even more difficult to pass now that the Hawaii State Board of Education has passed recommended benchmarks.
The board unanimously approved them at its regular meeting Thursday night at Castle High School — just 11 days before the new online test is scheduled to go live.
Civil Beat published two articles last month explaining that Hawaii’s assessment proficiency standards are already among the most rigorous in the nation. But every time the Hawaii Department of Education implements a new test — in this case, an online version of the same test adopted in 2007 — it must set new performance standards. (Read this story and view for background on setting proficiency standards.)
Several committees made up of 129 community members and educators reviewed the new test items developed by the . The committees made recommendations for what scores should constitute “passing” the assessment, and on Sept. 14 the education board’s curriculum committee approved the new “cut scores,” as they are called.
They are higher than the ones used on the former paper test, which means it will be harder for students to pass the test. Lowering cut scores would mean fewer correct answers would be required to pass the test, thereby raising the percentage of “proficient” students overnight. But the committees opted to raise the bar instead.
On the old test, 64 percent of third-grade students scored at or above “proficient” on the reading section. Based on a field test of the new assessment administered in the spring, an estimated 52 percent of third-graders would be “proficient” readers in the online test, using the new committee-recommended proficiency levels. Seventy-five percent of 10th-graders scored at or above proficient on the old assessment. By new benchmarks, only 50 percent would make the minimum score for proficiency.
Systems Accountability Office director Cara Tanimura said she received letters from many students in a range of grade levels who said the test was “hard.”
“It is a hard test,” said Jon Cohen, vice president for the , which developed both the old assessment and the new online version. “It’s a challenging test. It might take some getting used to, but at least the students won’t be bored.”
Students usually perform a little better on the real assessment than they do on field tests though, Tanimura explained. In the spring, students had to take the field test in addition to the former paper test, which was the one that actually counted toward meeting federal requirements. Schools focused their energy on preparing for the final paper test, rather than on a milk run of the new assessment.
