Test scores now available online

A new state testing standard that's supposed to better spotlight students' academic growth could mean bad — or good — news for schools barely meeting No Child Left Behind standards.

The standard is going to slightly lower the number of elementary pupils scoring at acceptable levels on the language arts core curriculum test (CRT). It will increase the number of students passing elementary math and high school language arts, according to an analysis conducted for the State Office of Education.

High school CRT math scores would be unaffected, since standards for the subject were set last year, state testing officials said.

The bubble represents only slight differences in data, state testing director Judy Park said. But it still could push schools already barely passing muster over the edge.

That makes some education officials nervous.

"We'll probably have some principals upset . . . and yes, there are going to be some comparison problems, and there are going to be issues at the end of the whole process on who made it and who didn't," said Reed Spencer, who oversees assessment in Ogden School District. "But we had to make some of these adjustments."

CRT scores were released online Friday as part of the Utah Performance Assessment System for Students, or U-PASS (see accompanying story).

The scores will be used in next month's No Child Left Behind reports. Districts are just going through their reports to make sure everything's accurate before they're released to the public, Park said.

No Child Left Behind aims to spotlight students who need extra help and spur schools into giving it to them. Its goal is to have all children score on grade level by 2014.

Every school in the country is tracked by adequate yearly progress (AYP) reports. Basically, to make AYP, every group of students, including those with disabilities or non-English-speaking backgrounds, has to do well on language arts and math. Schools must include 95 percent of students in the testing. If any one student group misses the mark on any one of 40 criteria, the whole school fails to make AYP.

AYP reports are well publicized and controversial. Last year, one-third of Utah's some 820 schools didn't make AYP — 85 because of participation under 95 percent.

Many education officials condemned the reports as unfair. At the same time, they see value in using test score data to improve lessons.