ISAT, The Punch Line

Education officials and government administrators have crowed every year when standardized testing scores have gone up even miniscule percentages. I have written many times in frustration how I didn’t understand why officials are pleased with scores that still put Illinois high schools in the bottom tier of achievement. From a story published in the Chicago Tribune on October 18th, we learn that essentially the “books might have been cooked” and the number of students passing should be even lower! I never saw that punch line coming!

How did the “books get cooked?” The State of Illinois lowered the number of points it takes for a student to pass the various sections of the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests (ISAT)! So more students were ranked as passing because it took less correct answers to pass!


According to the Chicago Tribune, “Back in 2006, it took 36 of 56 points — about 64 percent — to pass the fifth-grade reading test. Now, it's 31 points, or 55 percent. The third- and fourth-grade reading tests used to require 61 percent of possible points. This year, it's 54 percent.

Compared with 2006, fewer correct answers are required to pass 11 of 12 Illinois Standards Achievement Tests in reading and math, state data show, raising questions about how much students really have to know. Meanwhile, passing rates on the exams have risen, assuring parents and the public that schoolchildren are making gains.”

Illinois State Board of Education officials attribute the “lowering of the bar” to a standard statistical process in testing called "equating," which is used to make sure that tests are analogous during different years, even if the difficulty of questions varies. “Equating” would seem like a reasonable answer if the number of correct answers required for passing fluctuated year to year, but the requirements have gone DOWN every year!


The Tribune quoted a number of outside experts who don’t agree that “equating is the answer for the lowering of the standards for passing.


(1) Sherry Rose-Bond, a Columbus, Ohio, school testing official on the board of directors of the National Council on Measurement in Education and past president of the National Association of Test Directors said, “It absolutely does not make sense. While slight variations can be expected in correct answers required year by year. You're not going to have this steady downward tangent."

(2) Robert Linn, a professor emeritus of education and past president of the American Educational Research Association, agreed that a steady or big drop in passing requirements "would not be typical unless the state is intentionally trying to do that."


(3) Psychometrician John Wick, a testing consultant and former testing adviser for the state board, is very familiar with equating, and he senses something amiss. Wick has highlighted declines in ISAT passing requirements in a study posted on his Web site, (http://www.wickpartners.com/), including the steady drops in fifth-grade reading since 2006.  State testing consultants may attribute the changes to "an innocent equating issue," Wick wrote, but equating should involve small changes "usually driven by randomness.'' The drops he's seeing "do not look random to me."

The Tribune began reviewing data and “found that today's students were getting more wrong answers in several test areas compared with five years ago. Even so, passing rates statewide had risen.

The newspaper then requested information showing how many points have been required to pass the 14 ISAT tests in reading, math and science for the last five years, and was provided the data by the State Board of Education. On half the ISAT exams, the Tribune found, students can get less than 50 percent of total points and still pass.”


I am not being critical of the State Board of Education because I don’t have enough information. But the fact is that it takes less correct answers now to get a proficient rating than it did a few years ago, that does not seem right.


If any numbers are going to be altered, I vote for changing height and weight measurements. I would like to be 5’8” and weight 110 pounds. Can anyone take care of that?