The Rostrum
By JOSEPH M. CRONIN
State Superintendent of Education

Can the decline in school test scores be reversed?

FOR SOME time the College Entrance Examination Board had grown more concerned each year with the slide in the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores (SAT). Finally, in 1976, College Board President Sidney P. Mariana, the one-time Winnetka School superintendent (and U.S. commissioner of education), ordered up a special task force to investigate the decline in college board scores.

Willard Wirtz, a former secretary of labor, chaired the task force of distinguished national educators and social scientists. Remarkably, they could not agree on a single cause. That's understandable. A larger portion of our graduating high school students want to attend college which almost certainly means that more average students now take the test. Cutoff scores were lowered for admission to the student-short campuses, which had over-built in the 1950's and 60's, so even above average or superior students didn't have to study as hard. Television undoubtedly had some effect; some say it has destroyed evening study time for many students. The impetus of the space race, which was also an education race, died with the last moon shot. Vietnam era violence in colleges and schools contributed to a relaxation of requirements in beleaguered classrooms. Frankly, no one factor seems to explain the drift. Perhaps each potential "villain" chipped away at the national scores.

Meanwhile, how have Illinois schools fared? Illinois SAT verbal scores (the language portion) dropped between 1967 and 1975, but since then have leveled and stabilized. Because national scores have continued to drop, Illinois verbal scores are now 30 points above the national average. Illinois mathematical scores are in even better shape and since 1971 have been steady at about 510, which is 40 points above the national average.

Of course, not all students take the SAT exams. In recent years only 16 percent of Illinois college-bound students took the college boards. Many more students take the American College Test (ACT), which is required by public universities throughout the Midwest. Again, ACT test scores dropped for a while in the early 1970's but apparently "bottomed out" in 1976 and 1977. The ACT scores appear to be moving up again as school boards — and the media — promote a "back to the basics" approach.

Why has the decline stopped and why are Illinois scores higher than most other states? No one knows exactly why, but the plausible explanations include these:

1. Illinois high schools — city and suburban — have remained fundamentally academic and never really gave up the goal of academic excellence. Although some of the large schools added elective subjects, hundreds of college counselors have always exhorted bright students to take a full diet of English, math and science in preparation for college.

2. Illinois is a prosperous state with many above average income, college-educated parents. Good test scores, as Ralph Nader recently pointed out and all sociologists know, correlate very highly with high family income, levels of parental education, and the number of books and magazines around the house.

3. Illinois school districts remain close to the people. The 1,012 school boards have members up for reelection each and every year. The message about stressing academic subjects has reached most boards over and over again. Dozens of school boards have already revised standards of student promotion and emphasize remedial education for students who appear to falter on the low rungs of the academic ladder. In short, school boards in Illinois began early to respond to criticism by redirecting the schools.

Thirty other states responded to criticism by legislating statewide tests of "minimal competency" as a way to diagnose the educational health of the schools and impose a quick cure. However, several states, notably Florida, have had federal judges challenge the use of tests, especially when a passing score is required for graduation. Judges have pointed out that handicapped children may need special tests and are entitled to individual educational prescriptions. Also, the judge in Florida ruled that minority children must be given enough time in a desegregated school (four or more years) before a test requirement becomes effective. Ralph Nader is only the most recent critic of testing and the cultural and racial bias built into many tests.

H. L. Mencken once said, "For every complex problem there is a simple solution — and it is usually wrong." So it is with the problem of academic achievement. We live in a society which is infatuated with television and material wealth and is less inclined than before to read, write and participate in elections. The solution is not necessarily more testing but greater attention to the curriculum, to teacher competence, and to the choices we want to offer children.

Standardization may work in factories to efficiently mass-produce automobiles, machine tools and canned

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April 1980/Illinois Issues/35

The Rostrum
Continued from page 35

School test scores

goods, but group tests do not offer individual salvation and, in fact, may unintentionally homogenize and standardize our students so there is no difference in performance and expectations among individuals. Our schools prepare poets, politicians, inventors, musicians, homemakers, future managers and farmers, not assembly-line workers alone. The proper use of testing is to diagnose the needs of a student or the shortcomings of a school curriculum.

It is better to let a local school board set many of the standards than to let the state make all the rules. Local responsibility for education means that much of the burden rests on local citizens and local educators to evaluate the schools and make them better. The reversal of test score decline in Illinois schools may mean that this is precisely what has begun to happen and that many of the changes necessary have already been made by state and local school officials during the 1970's.

22/April 1980/Illinois Issues