Utah lags against national standards
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]By Lynze Wardle
Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau lwardle@standard.net
lwardle@standard.net
Local officials defend testing discrepancies
LAYTON -- While Utah students may do well on statewide math and reading tests, they fall behind when held to national standards, a national policy center stated Monday.
According to the Washington D.C.-based Alliance for Excellent Education, 77 percent of Utah eighth-graders were proficient in reading, according to the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students (U-PASS). However, the report said, just 27 percent of the state's eighth-graders were reading proficient according to the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) test.
State and local education officials say there is more to the story.
Comparing Utah's state tests with NAEP is like comparing "apples to oranges," said Judy Park, state associate superintendent over data assessment and accountability.
"It's not that one standard is higher than the other, it's just that they are different," she said.
In class, students learn the material that will be on state tests, Park said. NAEP material is not the focus of Utah teachers' curriculum.
The report also said that according to U-PASS, 72 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in mathematics, while only 30 percent of the students are proficient according to NAEP standards.
Dr. Christine Wahlquist, Davis School District's director of research and assessment, said Utah students do very well when judged by other types of national data, such as Advanced Placement and ACT tests.
"There are very few states that score significantly higher," she said.
Wahlquist said she has read education articles that claim NAEP standards are unattainably high.
Utah was not the only state where students scored lower on national tests than local exams, said Cindy Sadler, Alliance for Excellent Education's vice president of external relations. The average gap between states' recorded proficiency in reading and NAEP results is 35 percent, Sadler said. In math, the average gap was 28 percent.
Sadler said local scores are generally higher because the states have a lot of flexibility in how they design student accountability tests.
The report also stated that "Utah does not require and finance mentoring for every notice teacher," but said doing so has been proven to improve teacher retention rates.
Davis district mentor leader Dr. Brian Pead said Utah does require that all new teachers complete a three-year mentoring program.
Financing for the program, however, comes from a mix of general district funds and federal Title II money, said Rebecca Anderson, Utah Office of Education's educator quality specialist.
State money for mentoring will soon be available, if legislators approve H.B. 381, which would allocate $28.5 million in ongoing money and $100,000 in one-time funds for mentoring and other teacher-retention initiatives.
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