N.C. should scrap the End of Grade, and End of Course testing program immediately | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The State of North Carolina and every school system in the state, including Beaufort County, is going to be in for a rough financial ride next year, and every year until the economy improves. The problem is money. Or, more precisely, the lack of money.

    Beaufort County, like many other counties in the state, has spent most of its "savings account," a.k.a. fund balance and is in no position to make up for the loss of Federal dollars or the impending state cuts. But we have one suggestion for a cut that not only would save millions of dollars but would actually make a major improvement in the education of our children. Cut the state's testing program out. Cut the whole thing, completely out.

    We don't know how much money the state spends on End-of-Grade and End-of-Course tests and don't even think it is worth looking up. If it is more than a hundred dollars it is not only too much, but it is doing great harm to our education system. Here's why.

    The entire state "accountability system" is built on "minimum performance." When you hear educators give their PowerPoint presentations on how much "improvement" we have made over last year (usually expressed in terms of tenths of a percentage point) you should always realize that what they are talking about is the percentage of students who scored at or above Level III. The test do not pretend to measure how much progress each student has made against a standard of how much gain that student should have made and it does not measure how well our brightest and best students do.

    Every teacher and principal in this state knows how to raise a school scores...just concentrate on getting the weakest performing students to do a little bit better and viola, you become a School of Progress or some other such esoteric label that means absolutely nothing but to school board members who know absolutely nothing about how to measure educational excellence.

    But worst of all, the EOG and EOC tells parents either nothing at all or worse, it gives them a false sense of security. After all, if the report that comes home says you child scored Level IV and the legend says there are four levels most parent will assume their child is doing well.

    But then let that same Level IV student take the SAT and apply to a competitive college and get turned down and you see what is wrong with the EOC. In other words, the state's testing program is a lie for many students.

    Apparently, the general public has come to understand what our educational leaders have not. The Civitas Institute has just completed a new poll in which it found that 68% of those polled favor eliminating the EOG and EOC testing program and replacing it with a nationally standardized test. Only 24% would be opposed, and we wonder why on earth anyone whose paycheck is not dependent on these tests would be opposed.

    And speaking of those whose paycheck depends of the testing program, we would suggest that every one of these positions should be cut out before any teacher or teacher assistant is cut.

    So what would we replace it with to know whether our students are learning what they should know? The answer is simple:

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP, is already developed. It works as well as any other testing program to track individual student progress and works better than anything we have now to show us how well a school or school system is doing compared to other schools and school system across the country. And its cheaper.

    So the new General Assembly should move immediately to declare a moratorium on EOG and EOC testing. The Department of Public Instruction should be given a reasonable amount of time to implement NAEP testing, either on a sample basis or for all students. And local school systems should be freed to use the money they are now spending on the testing system in whatever way they need to in order to save as many teaching positions as possible.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.