Though the state missed its chance to be a pioneer in high school end-of-course exams, the Ohio Department of Education is catching up. It announced recently a plan to make the switch as early as 2013. The state will develop tests designed to measure whether students really have mastered the material in specific courses.
An example is Algebra II, one of seven subjects that some Ohio students took end-of-course exams in this year as part of a pilot program.
Algebra II is a high school student’s first foray into higher-level math; research shows that doing well in this class strongly correlates with success in college. A state Algebra II exam, taken when students complete the course, is a much better way to judge their understanding of the material than a general 10th-grade math exam. It’s also a way to make sure that schools are really covering the subject, not passing off a basic class as Algebra II.
In other states, subject tests cover a range of subjects, from basic to advanced courses. A minimum number must be passed to graduate and students often get at least some choices about which tests they take.
In addition to these tests, and instead of having an Ohio Graduation Test, Ohio will pay for every student to take the ACT college entrance test. There won’t be a minimum score needed for students to get their diploma. Rather, the goal of pushing the ACT is to get students thinking about college and what they have to do in high school to be prepared for college.
Having almost every student take the ACT also permits a fairer comparison of Ohio students with those in other states.
The 10th-grade Ohio Graduation Test served its purpose of raising the standards for graduation. It replaced a test that was based on eighth-grade material. But beyond that, it isn’t very useful. It measures general knowledge and doesn’t test whether students have really learned the content in specific classes.
Moreover, the passing score has been kept low enough that all but a tiny fraction of students ultimately pass it. (If you don’t pass, you can’t graduate.) Because it is only taken in Ohio, there is no way to compare Ohio’s students with those in other states. It means nothing to most colleges.
Gov. Taft’s 2000 commission was ahead of its time in many of its recommendations. Its other good ideas — breaking down test data to make it more meaningful, developing standards for each subject and attaching tests to those standards at various grade levels — were largely adopted and have helped teachers and parents spot problems and gaps in kids’ knowledge.
But end-of-course exams didn’t make it into law back then. In 2000, only two other states were using end-of-course exams. Now 14 have them and several others are moving in that direction.
That the commission’s work still looks goods a decade later speaks well of the 33 carefully selected educators, legislators and business leaders who came up with the ideas.
When the state and the country jumped on the testing bandwagon — out of concern that too many schools aren’t giving students what they need — everyone knew that it would take time to get good at figuring out what students really know. That process hasn’t been easy, it’s definitely not over and it probably will never be perfect. But the movement is evolving in the right way.
— Cox News Service