toledoblade.com --

A new study suggests high-stakes examinations such as Ohio's proficiency tests are a reliable means of evaluating student achievement even if their schools teach to the test.

The report released yesterday by a New York-based think tank called Manhattan Institute, included data from two states and seven school districts, including Toledo Public Schools.

The group chose districts that administer tests used to reward or sanction schools as well as other standardized tests that are not used for accountability purposes and, therefore, are considered lower-stakes tests.

The findings show a strong correlation in student performance on the two sets of tests, even though schools have no incentive to try to manipulate results on the low stakes tests, said Jay Greene, lead author of the study. So, whatever kind of teaching is going on, it is getting similar results on both indicators, he said.

That's important because some opponents of Ohio's proficiency tests fear districts may try to inflate their scores by focusing classroom time on material that will be on the proficiency tests or assigning better teachers to grades taking those high-stakes tests, said Kurt Taube, an educational consultant at the Ohio Department of Education.

"That suspicion was not borne out," he said. "It's good news as far as being able to use proficiency tests as a measure of accountability because there is no reason to believe that the results are in any way distorted."

In the most recent Ohio Department of Education report cards, districts were graded on 22 indicators, including reading, writing, science, math, and citizenship proficiency test scores for 10th, ninth, sixth, and fourth graders. Toledo Public Schools, which joined the schools in Fairfield as the only ones in the Manhattan Institute's study from Ohio, ranked as an academic emergency.

While some teachers oppose teaching to the test to improve the district's standing, officials have not, said Robert Rachor, the district's director of research.

"We believe in teaching to the test because we believe that students need to learn the outcomes that are tested by the proficiency tests," he said. "If one of the outcomes is adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, we certainly would expect our teachers to teach to that."

Alex Wohl, a spokesman for American Federation of Teachers, had not seen the report and said he would be hesitant to place value on a test based on a correlation with another test. The key, he said, is to make sure any high-stakes test is linked to a curriculum.

"When it's aligned with a quality curriculum and part of an overall standards-based system, then indeed a good test is one indicator of that good system," he said.

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