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ISA October 2006 School Report

In October 2006, ISM students joining the P5, S1 and S3 classes participated in the International Schools' Assessment (ISA), a programme developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and designed specifically for international schools.

ISM students in P5, M1 and M3 will be taking ACER tests in February 2008.

Our students, who were near the start of the 2006/07 school year, took the test designed for the previous school year in order to give us an indication of their level compared with others at the end of that year. Thus students starting P5 took the Grade 3 test (Grade 3 is equivalent to the end of P4), S1 students took the Grade 5 test, and S3 students took the Grade 7 test.

The ISA provides an insight into students' proficiency in the areas of Mathematical Literacy, Reading, Narrative Writing and Expository Writing, in each case derived from a single measure of performance on a particular day. In order to make best use of the results, it is important to interpret them in the context of other information about students' achievement, provided by on-going classroom assessment and perhaps other external assessments.

The mean results for each of ISM's P5, S1 and S3 classes are summarised here:
P5MathematicsReadingWriting AWriting B
ISM Mean score333268385433
All other schools293230369405
Other Like Schools303245375411



S1MathematicsReadingWriting AWriting B
ISM Mean score455368461489
All other schools433350474471
Other Like Schools439359481484



S3MathematicsReadingWriting AWriting B
ISM Mean score537486561557
All other schools504446544534
Other Like Schools512454544539



If you have questions about your own child's individual results which have been sent to you by email, please contact the appropriate one of the following:
  • Betty Brown - Head of Primary, Arusha Campus
  • John Iglar - Head of Secondary, Arusha Campus
  • Kathy Slocombe - Head of Primary, Moshi Campus
  • Colin Beveridge - Head of Secondary, Moshi Campus

    You can find more information about the ISA programme by going to to http://www.acer.edu.au/tests/school/isa/intro.html.

    Standardized testing comes with caveats, of course. You may find the following article which Barry Sutherland wrote recently for Columbia University in New York informative:

    The Muddy Waters of Standardized Testing
    NCLB lessons for international schools

    In January 2001, the United States passed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation to reform the public education system with "solutions based on accountability, choice and flexibility in Federal programs" (NCLB Executive Summary, 2001). This law did not affect independent schools in the United States. This law also, of course, does not affect self-governed international schools. So why should international school educators care about standardized testing? Accountability.

    America’s urban public schools, in general, were not working well nearing the end of the last century. Much finger pointing and blame ensued and during that useless exercise many children were being poorly educated in the US. To be fair this is a gross oversimplification but suffice it to say that there were major problems. Test scores of American high school students were lower than students in many other first world countries. The NCLB Act was aimed at "improving the performance of America’s elementary and secondary schools, while at the same time ensuring that no child is trapped in a failing school" (NCLB Executive Summary, 2001).

    NCLB requires each state to have an accountability system for schools. It requires challenging standards in reading and in mathematics, annual testing for all students in Grades 3-8, and "annual state-wide progress objectives" ensuring that all groups of students (broken out by poverty, race, ethnicity, disability and limited English proficiency) reach proficiency within 12 years and to ensure that no group is "left behind." Schools that fail to meet annual benchmarks are subject to corrective action aimed at getting them back on track. In other words, schools are being held accountable for their performance (NCLB Executive Summary, 2001).

    As a parent, if your child is attending a "failing" school in the US, you can transfer them to a better performing school. Unfortunately, on the international school scene there is sometimes very little choice for parents in certain parts of the world. This raises the question of accountability and how the international school can show the children are learning. International School Moshi offers the IB Diploma Programme, which has terminal examinations for each of its subjects. Students are graded independently from the school and those grades are reported against the world average scores. This is an indicator of performance, but we need to keep in mind the variables that can affect test scores. Despite a student’s aptitude and preparation, she may just not write a particularly good test on that important day. As such, the score may not reflect what she has "learned".

    The NCLB act is the result of 15 years of test-driven reform in the United States. A multi-year review and analysis of the effects of NLCB, showed ten major effects of the legislation. The main optimistic outcome is that test scores have risen on student achievement tests in reading and mathematics. Schools are now spending more time on reading and mathematics, but at the expense of some subjects not tested, mainly social studies (Jennings and Rentner, 2006). At ISM, we are committed to a balanced curriculum and we must be thoughtful of changes that can affect that balance.

    The report also found that schools are now analysing test score data more closely. However, NCLB has been criticized for forcing schools to adjust their curriculum and instruction "teaching to the test as a priority" in order to improve their test scores. One public middle school I visited in New York recently, added 37.5 minutes onto the school day strictly for low achieving students to do test-prep. This public middle school failed to reach the NLCB targets and the Head of the school explained that if scores did not improve, that she would be personally held accountable (Elster, 2007). That is pretty dramatic accountability.

    Another school I visited in Manhattan was a small public middle school of 200 students, Grades 5,6,7,8. In this school all those grades are mixed age level. Yes, Grade 5 and 8 students in the same Math class. The school does not do any test prep. The Head of the school explained that their only test prep is to remind students to bring a pencil the day of the test. This school was one of only 12 in New York State that won an achievement award for their high test scores. What does this tell us? Not much except that there are several factors that can affect student achievement scores. The 25-year Principal of the Center School explained that although they participate in the NCLB testing, they do not let it get in the way of learning (Schwartz 2007).

    In October 2006, for the first time in ISM’s 38-year history, we had the P5, S1 and S3 classes sit for the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) International Schools Assessment (ISA) reading, writing and mathematics standardized tests. The ISA is a high-quality test that international schools use to monitor student performance over time and to confirm that their internal assessments are aligned with international expectations of performance (ACER ISA website).

    As a parent, as soon as I received the test scores for my daughters (they both took the ISA tests in October), I immediately compared them to the average student scores of "like schools" in the test sample. And the same things run through my mind as every parent. I try to relate the number on a reading test to who my daughters are as people. As soon as I do that, the waters get muddy because I am linking a test score of a child on a particular day with a young developing learner to whom I am very emotionally attached. These first standardized test results at ISM will generate far more questions than answers, but it will initiate some very important introspective conversations that can lead to school improvement.

    A full evaluation of student achievement requires a range of assessment instruments including teacher observations and evaluations and the assessment of work produced over extended periods of time as well as short tests. Educators agree that when evidence of student achievement is collected from a variety of sources the evaluation will be more reliable. A standardized test enhances the assessment data that schools collect internally, but it should not be the only source of assessment data in a school.

    Although the No Child Left Behind act is in no way perfect, there have been some positive effects in American public schools. International schools must be vigilant to not let performance test scores become the goal of education. However, we do need to hold ourselves accountable for measuring student performance in a variety of ways. Standardized testing is one way to inform this measurement. We should not be afraid to test our students against an external standard from time to time if we are serious about improving our curriculum, our instruction and our overall learning environment.

    References

    Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) International Schools Assessment (ISA) (n.d.) [WWW page]. http://www.acer.edu.au/tests/school/isa/intro.html

    Elster, Elana. Principal, Booker T. Washington, Meeting with 2007 Columbia Teacher’s College Visiting Fellows, 28 January 2007.

    Jennings J. and Stark Rentner D. (2006) Ten big effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on public schools. Phi Delta Kappa International, vol. 88.

    Schwartz, Elaine. Principal, Center School, Meeting with 2007 Columbia Teacher’s College Visiting Fellows, 29 January 2007.

    US Federal Government Education website, (2004). Executive summary of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001[text file]. http://www.ed.gov/print/nclb/overview/intro/execsumm.html


    "Other like schools" are those with a similar ratio of English speaking background students to non-English speaking background students.
    Differences considered statistically significant are shown in bold face.

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