The State Board of Education on Wednesday approved new labels to inform families and teachers about how students are performing on state standardized tests, aiming to provide clear descriptions that will not be demoralizing for lower-performing students.
Student scores will be ranked in one of four categories on California’s annual tests in math, reading and science. The new categories will be: Advanced, Proficient, Developing and Minimal.
The old categories being replaced are: Standard Exceeded; Standard Met; Standard Nearly Met, or Standard Not Met.
In the 7-4 vote, the board majority rejected labels recommended by staff from the California Dept. of Education, which had conducted two rounds of focus groups.
Rob Manwaring, who was part of a coalition of nine groups that had raised concerns about earlier labels, was cautiously optimistic.
He said he understood the value of providing information in a positive, encouraging way, which is called an “assets-based approach,” but that parents also need a sober understanding of where their child stands academically to convey an appropriate “sense of urgency.”
“I think the labeling of the lowest level as Minimal and the second level as Developing seems to suggest that level of need,” said Manwaring, senior policy and fiscal advisor for the Oakland-based advocacy group Children Now.
The coalition had expressed strong concern over labels for the lowest two groups that had been proposed in November: Foundational and Inconsistent.
The coalition — which included EdTrust-West, California Charter Schools Assn., Alliance for a Better Community, Teach Plus and Children Now — had said the terms Foundational and Inconsistent would “would make the data more confusing and misleading.”
The state board delayed action in November, in large part because students, parents and rank-and-file educators were not given an opportunity to provide input. Focus groups in December and January reinforced the objections to Foundational and Inconsistent, according to a staff report.
Instead, state education department staff changed direction and recommended Basic and Below Basic for the lower two levels. These labels had the broadest support within focus groups of students, parents, teachers, testing coordinators and advocates.
The full set of recommended labels — Advanced, Proficient, Basic and Below Basic — also aligned with the labels used on a well-known nationwide test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is often called the nation’s report card. The proposed labels also are in common use on tests in other states.
But members of the appointed state board did not fall in line.
“Labels matter,” said Francisco Escobedo. “We see our kids as continual learners.” Below Basic suggests failure, he said. “Emerging is a more fitting word.” He noted that Emerging is used for lowest level on a state test of assessing how well non-English-speaking students are learning English.
But a staff member pushed back — saying that a term to capture a student who is just starting to learn English is different from a description of a student’s academic skills.
Other board members were not won over by Escobedo’s suggested term. But they shared his concern over negativity.
“I also had a visceral reaction to the word Basic,” said Haydee Rodriguez, who added that students use the word basic as a slang insult, a revelation that caused board President Linda Darling-Hammond to take pause.
Board member Cynthia Glover Woods first suggested Minimal for the lowest category. Another suggestion brought forward for the lowest scorers was Beginning.
Board members also slightly reworded the extended description of what became the Developing label — saying it did not convey that a student at that level was likely to need extra academic support.
Among those who voted no on the new labels, board member Alison Yoshimoto-Towery felt the discussion was being unnecessarily curtailed. Escobedo said the new labels remained too harsh. Gabriela Orozco Gonzalez said the views of students and parents in the focus groups should be respected — they apparently had no issue with the word Basic.
Disappointing scores, regardless of label
Even if the board had opted for the NAEP-style labels, they would not have been interchangeable across the tests.
In general, the NAEP labels represent a more rigorous grading standard, with a higher threshold for achieving a rating of Proficient or Advanced. These higher levels are harder to achieve on NAEP than on California tests concluded research that compared state tests with the national NAEP exams.
NAEP results remain low nationwide and in California and have generally failed to recover from the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. Math and English test scores of fourth- and eighth-graders largely held steady or declined nationwide over the last two years — results that were about the same in Los Angeles and California.
Not only are few students scoring as Advanced or Proficient, but fewer are achieving NAEP’s version of a Basic ranking, the next level down.
On the most recent results from this test, for example, the percentage of L.A. students who scored as Proficient or better in fourth-grade math was 27%. For California it was 35%.
In fourth-grade reading, 25% of L.A. students tested as proficient or better. California’s rate was 29%.
On California’s tests, student proficiency rates are higher, but still widely trailing pre-pandemic achievement levels that themselves were considered unacceptable at the time.
Overall, the state tests offer a more precise check than NAEP on what students in California are supposed to be learning. The NAEP test, in contrast, tests a small sample of students to allow for state-to-state comparisons.