Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

The Bigotry of Low Expectations Is Getting More Bigoted

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Setting the bar for low expectations. Yup, that’s Virginia in the red circle. Virginia’s passing grade for 4th grade Standards of Learning exams is below what the NAEP considers “basic,” which is lower than proficient.

by James A. Bacon

Virginia’s standardized tests used to measure reading and math proficiency for 4th graders set the lowest passing score in the country in 2019 — literally the lowest among the 50 states — according to a National Assessment of Educational Progress report. Virginia’s reading standards were so low that they fell below what NAEP considered “basic.”

NAEP conducts what it calls a “mapping study” that compares the proficiency standards set by the states for their students. Because standards vary across states, they cannot be compared directly. So, NAEP compares state standards to its standard, which it uses for national tests every two years.

The mapping study, released June 1, 2021, examined the reading and math standards for tests administered in 2019. Virginia’s reading standards that year reflected decisions made by the Virginia Board of Education (SBOE) in 2013. In 2020 the SBOE watered down Virginia’s English reading test standards even more, requiring students to answer even fewer questions correctly to be considered “proficient.” Unless other states lower their standards, Virginia could fall even further behind its peers.

And, for your viewing pleasure, here is how Virginia’s math standards stack up:

Barely adequate

Who will suffer the most from the steady erosion of Virginia’s educational standards? Poor minorities, of course.

You cannot improve “equity” by lowering standards. All you can do is cover up your failures.

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54 responses to “The Bigotry of Low Expectations Is Getting More Bigoted”

  1. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Important to note that this is NOT the actual scores but mapping of the standards.

    Virginia ranks HIGH on the actual scores

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d23c0f405cc692799ff665aca379016e9751337fb1cec8fb1d6fc0083f14d61a.jpg

    1. WayneS Avatar
      WayneS

      Do you honestly consider those scores high, or rather “HIGH”?

      Only 38% of students at or above above “proficient” does not seem all that great to me.

      And with more than 30% of students not even reaching the “basic” level, I don’t think we should be bragging about how “high” our state’s scores are.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        as ranked against other states – YES.

        as ranked against other nations – NO – and I agree.

        It’s been like this for 20-30 years.

        AND it’s THE reason why VDOE wants to put more equity emphasis on the lower groups! They want to expend more resources on the lower scoring groups and the haters are portraying it as an effort at “equal outcomes” which it is not.

        On one hand the anti folks hammer VDOE schools for terrible scores then turn around and hammer VDOE for trying to address the changes to address them.

        1. WayneS Avatar
          WayneS

          I 100% support providing additional resources and assistance to teach students who are struggling, no matter why they are struggling.

          I am opposed to lowering educational standards to allow more students to “succeed” just so teachers, administrators and politicians can make themselves look good. I’m also opposed to neglecting the teaching of reading, writing, math and science while expending excessive time, energy and money instructing children in the latest social and racial teaching fads.

  2. WayneS Avatar
    WayneS

    At least we can honestly say we have higher standards than Puerto Rico…

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      Yes, like Arizona.

  3. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    “You cannot improve equity by lowering the standards.” Oh yes you can. Now all subgroups are equally dumb. No surprise here. No measurable data to be found until next summer. Most Virginia students could opt out of SOL testing for the past two years AND THEY DID.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      “Our” problem in the US is that our higher rated kids are every bit as good as other countries higher rated but down in the middle and bottom – we are much worse and that takes us to 25 th or so compared to other countries.

      They do a better job of educating their middle and low kids that we do.

      1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
        James Wyatt Whitehead

        It’s easier to dumb down the top. No one is really raised up with this nonsense. Closing the gap by dumbing everyone down is insane but the new fad in education.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          but that’s NOT what they are doing. They’re trying to provide MORE to the lower groups to increase their skills.

          The mission of the public schools is to provide all kids with a STANDARD education.

          It’s really not their responsibility to provide advanced education – though they do – but failing at getting the lower kids on better levels.

          Do you think the states that are better than Va “dumbed down”? How about the 25 countries that score better than us – did they “dumb down”.

          What should we do to improve the middle and bottom LIKE the states better than us did and the countries better than us do?

          You guys seem to claim the die is cast if the kid is black or economically disadvantaged or has one parent.

          “Oh too bad, you are screwed”.

          That’s just not the reality in other countries and other states and even in Virginia in some counties.

          It can and is done.

          Ya’ll sometimes seem to be basically pitting the needs of the advanced kids against the lower kids AND you’re choosing the advantaged kids over them.

          If ya’ll had an actual plan besides blame – it would be different.

          1. DJRippert Avatar
            DJRippert

            “The mission of the public schools is to provide all kids with a STANDARD education.”

            Where is that written? The US Constitution? The Declaration of Independence?

            The mission of public schools should be to educate students to their fullest potential.

          2. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            It’s written in the SOLs and other. Their job is to help each child obtain a basic education from which they can find work in the economy and/or go to college.

            If they are going to spend MORE money – the argument can be on what – helping some kids reach advanced levels or helping more kids who do not yet meet the minimum standard?

          3. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            “The mission of public schools should be to educate students to their fullest potential.”

            For those below the 70 percentile, that consists of not throwing and eating their own excrement.

          4. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
            James Wyatt Whitehead

            The left has hypnotized so many. Raise standards, kick in the cash to reduce class sizes, hold’em back until mastery is attained, and get the cross hairs right over the struggling schools.
            https://24.media.tumblr.com/2eb299bb0bc52a8ff45739f21edc024d/tumblr_mojx5bmzDZ1r8g0buo1_1280.gif

          5. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Geeze James. Public Education is a LEFT concept! The mere idea that ALL kids regardless of their or their parents station in life are ENTITLED to an “education” is about as Marxist as you can get!

            The GOAL of public education is to help each child reach their maximum potential – to provide them with the basic tools they need to use – more and more on their own as they grow to be adults.

            It has never been a perfect process. And as Matt Hurt and others have said, money alone won’t guarantee it. You can pay two teachers the same exact wage – and they will not be equal in their teaching – right?

            A new teacher right out of college is not going to have the skills of a veteran yet that teacher is still given some of the harder kids to teach – because the veteran teacher gets their pick of where and who to teach and newbies get what the veteran don’t want.

            Telling newbie teachers to teacher “harder” is futile – it takes YEARS for a teacher to get to the top of their game – correct?

            We keep talking like assigning blame will get us to a better place.

            Accountability, yes, that’s why we do have SOLs and mapping, etc… but just blaming is counter-productive especially when we blame because they want to provide more resources for the kids that are not making it … it gets blamed as “lefties” seeking “equal outcomes” when we all know that, that’s not the goal at all. We just want to get as many kids as possible to the point where they can grow up and be financially responsible for themselves and their own kids. That’s can be such a bad thing, but apparently it is to some who want to stop it.

          6. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
            James Wyatt Whitehead

            Shelby Foote once said that public education only provides one with the means to acquire knowledge. The real teacher is life and the experience of living. That is where the real learning happens. Too bad we can’t even give young people basic means of how to acquire knowledge now.

          7. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            and I could not agree more. Is the purpose of schools to develop advanced students once they have achieved the”means to acquire knowledge” ?

        2. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          You can’t dumb down the top. That’s why they are called “the top”. The top could be handed a copy of “The Bell Curve” at the age of 3, and left to their own devices.

          1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
            James Wyatt Whitehead

            Margaret Thatcher gave a great speech once about closing the gap. Pushing down the top to close the gap. Embedded in Virginia education public policy now.

    2. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      Oh, don’t kid yourself. Americans have always been dumb. It’s been a scant handful that has dragged the whole bloody lot along.

      1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
        James Wyatt Whitehead

        WEB Dubois agreed. He put all of his eggs in the “Talented Tenth” basket.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Not entirely the way that other developed countries work -though.

          The basic concept of “Public” education actually IS egalitarian in concept, no?

          Why should every kid be given an equal opportunity at education if we already know 9/10ths of them will never meet our expectations?

          We in America seem more than willing to cede this to Asia, Europe, etc, et al.

          American kids are stupid. Ipso Facto.
          Asians are better than us and will soon be in charge of us, right? At least it won’t be Hispanics…. 😉

          1. WayneS Avatar
            WayneS

            Well which is it, Marxist or egalitarian, because those two things are far from synonymous.

          2. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Okay, let’s hear your view of the two.

        2. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          He was far too generous. He would lose more than half his eggs in a basket that large.

  4. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    Help me here, Jim … we lower our standards so we can pretend that a higher percentage of our students read at a proficient level? Is that what you are saying?

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      If those lower standards actually reflected Virginia’s performance, it may mean something but if Virginia’s kids meet proficiency standards better than 40 other states including Maryland (which is BELOW the national average) , what does that mean?

      Not sure how Va ended up that low on the mapping… Did they lower the mapping standards or what?

  5. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    This is embarassing. We should be raising standards and expectations, not lowering them.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      I’m not sure how Virginia ended up at the bottom though and agree it’s counter to the concepts of SOLs.

      1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
        Dick Hall-Sizemore

        We ended up at the bottom because we lowered the passing score.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Not disputing.. wondering how VDOE got there… rationale, justification, etc… and totally counter to Virginia’s actual SOL performance which puts us in the top 10 nationally. just ???

  6. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Yeah Dick, woulda, coulda, shoulda… education in America
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-FotYss3fRo

  7. Matt Hurt Avatar
    Matt Hurt

    Lowering the cut scores on our SOL tests is a real problem, and is very disturbing besides that. First, one must ask, in this current climate of increased focus on equity, why are we doing this? We have had gaps in our subgroup performance since the advent of the SOL test, for example between our black and white students. When we lower our expectations on our state assessments for what we consider proficient, that will automatically reduce the gap between those pass rates. However, in real terms, did we really reduce the “real” gaps in performance? Will this reduction in the gap in performance that we “measured” on our SOL test correlate to a similar reduction in gaps in a nationally normed assessment? I argue that it will not- the gaps will persist in real life all other things unchanged.

    I really think the outcomes of lowering our expectations will be to whitewash our outcome gaps among our subgroups. Things will look better on paper (based on state assessment results), but in real terms, the differences will still be there. More struggling schools will be accredited because of the lowered standards, which means the accreditation incentive will no longer be there to cause those schools to make real differences for these kids.

    One of the problems that this will exacerbate is that of participation in advanced courses. Those 3-8 math and reading SOL tests measure real skills that are real prerequisites that students need to master to have the foundational jumping off point to have the ability to be successful in advanced courses in high school. If kids don’t have those foundational skills, they are less likely to be successful in those courses. When we lower the cut scores on the SOL test, this will have a negative effect on this.

    The thing that really concerns me more than anything is that anyone thinks that lowering our standards is the way to help students in traditionally lower performing subgroups. I do not wish to imply motives to anyone, but it seems to me that the powers that be do not believe kids in these subgroups are capable of performing to the old standard. This thought makes me hang my head in shame for those folks. The problem with that is that these kids can perform, it’s just that the Board of Education has let the adults who are responsible for making this happen off the hook to a certain degree. Shameful.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      Matt – do you know WHEN the cut scores were reduced and why? Is there VDOE words available?

      I hear what you are saying and you have affected my thinking, but lowering the cut scores actually seems antithetical to their equity initiatives as well to the fact that despite the lowered cut scores, the overall state performance puts it in the top 10 in the country.

      Talk some more on this if you can. I respect your views which are based on actual work in the field.

      1. Matt Hurt Avatar
        Matt Hurt

        Yes sir. The Board of Education is required to adopt cut scores when new SOL tests are created to assess the new standards. They lowered the cut scores in Math for the 2019 school year, and the Reading cut scores for this school year. Therefore, this will not have had the time necessary to affect any NEAP data. The NEAP data will likely be a lagging indicator as the pernicious effect of this will take time to degrade our outcomes. However, as someone said above, if other states also lower their standards, it could mask this problem.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          So we’re talking about recent changes in response to COVID rather than longer term trend changes?

          Longer trend – have we been reducing cut scores all along?

          1. Matt Hurt Avatar
            Matt Hurt

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2597f0fff95b9c68edb77ecbc67ebc2a90e46a16a1c7af051bbab509ea21897b.png

          2. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
            James Wyatt Whitehead

            Good one Mr. Hurt. It reveals a great deal about education. No one is served well by this.

          3. Matt Hurt Avatar
            Matt Hurt

            No sir. The last time changes were made (Math in 2012 and Reading in 2013) everything was made much more rigorous. I’m not sure what happened with the cut scores (I can’t find that info), but the standards themselves were made more rigorous, and we implemented the Technology Enhanced Items (TEI) those years. TEI are items that are not just a straight multiple choice, and include selecting more than one correct answer, dragging the correct answer onto the right spot in an image (such a labeling a Venn Diagram), and etc. During those years, pass rates plummeted across the state. We learned how to address this new rigor, and then scores began to recover. In 2015, we implemented expedited retakes foer the first time in grades 3-8 (giving the kids a do-over if they scored from 375-399) and this also caused the pass rates to increase, so after that point it’s difficult to measure the recovery from the new rigor.

          4. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            I much thank you. It’s information like you’re providing that we need in the blog posts in order to really form informed views. I have a hard time reading what you are providing and agreeing on the “soft bigotry” narrative. More complicated than that.

          5. Matt Hurt Avatar
            Matt Hurt

            I really think the intentions of the Board are good and noble. However, lowering expectations is antithetical to achieving equity. Unfortunately, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

            I think a lot of the places that are struggling with student performance do have a lot of issues that are not simple. For example, if a significant number of your classrooms and administrator’s offices have revolving doors in them, that’s a foundation problem that must be solved before we can begin to work on student outcomes. However, whitewashing the problem will not make it disappear.

          6. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            The last paragraph is illuminating coming from someone who works in the field and it is totally non-partisan and direct on point to a real problem and your words are echoed here by James , a retired teaching veteran. Credible.

            Schools that are not performing – often also end up with staff changes and “churn”. I saw this happen at an elementary school where a “take-over specialist” was brought on board – and the performance problems actually got worse because she chased off people including veterans. Once she was gone, they had to rebuild almost from scratch but they got lucky – the new principal was a true team builder and he turned the school around – and then – yep – he got promoted to administrator……. 😉 money talks.

      2. Matt Hurt Avatar
        Matt Hurt

        This table represents the change in the cut scores in math, and the corresponding differences in pass rates. Please note that the 6th grade math standards became a little more rigorous, but the others remined fairly constant, cut scores notwithstanding.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Awesome table! Thanks! Is there one for reading? 😉

          the cut scores from 2018 to 2019?

          Inexplicable to me reducing the cut scores as SOL scores are increasing.

          Do you understand that?

          1. Matt Hurt Avatar
            Matt Hurt

            The cut scores didn’t change in Reading until this year. VDOE is supposed to publish the 2021 data in August, then we’ll see how that played out by comparing the 2019-2021 data. The only problem with that is that our educational response to the Pandemic will significantly skew the data.

          2. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            As usual, I thank you for your informative contributions.

    2. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      Thanks for this critique. It embodies all the reasons I thought lowering the cut scores was a bad idea, but you articulated them much better than I could have.

  8. Baconator with extra cheese Avatar
    Baconator with extra cheese

    Sounds like Virginia will be the foil to Lake Wobegon (and it’s disgusting air of whiteness).
    Virginia where ….. all the children are below average.

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      It is a possible outcome.

  9. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    There are 4 charts here that give a picture of where Virginia is with reading and math.

    First notice the difference between 4th grade and 8th grade scale scores
    Then also notice our ranking when comparing 4th grade and then our ranking comparing the 8th grade.

    What can we conclude when looking at the difference between Virginia 4th grade and 8th grade scale scores for math and reading?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1dce8a004cd8a3f6a3ec95d768b315a2b8e4e0b0bddf345a12702d71a090ae57.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/618f0465d8c40263e9c93dd80fff70a1778216c2a8837c7e06aec02bef1167a4.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/10d07c8f210032c0cd69752cade2f87e8c6a6f8d1dc9c502f1ed5d13699b5fe1.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0af64a311a764826ade9dcaeee253bbcc6b6ef1876662bcfca4aa66fdb407ddd.jpg

  10. Baconator with extra cheese Avatar
    Baconator with extra cheese

    Charlottesville is now claiming their schools contain 86% “gifted” students. This is getting hilarious.

    1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
      James Wyatt Whitehead

      Yes they were “gifted” participation trophies since T ball.

  11. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    LarryG, you began with this: “Important to note that this is NOT the actual scores but mapping of the standards.” Can you explain what you mean to us dummies who do not read VDOE stats regularly? Why isn’t VA being 50th in the nation as JB described it as damning as it sounds?

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      Because what he is showing is NOT the actual SOL scores and he doesn’t really make that clear.

      Virginia scores in the top 10 in the country on actual academic performance, but their “cut” scores for determining SOL pass rates is way low for some reason.

      See Matt Hurts comments and the NAEP charts I provided.

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