MAP testing

'Tis the season for the Missouri Assessment Program tests. Across the state, students in grades three through eight are taking math and communication arts tests. High school sophomores are taking math tests. And juniors are being tested in communication arts.

The results will determine whether their schools are making adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Schools that don't make adequate yearly progress are subject to progressively stronger remedial measures.

Many schools in the region do well in MAP testing. The Leopold School District ranks in the top 10 in MAP scores compiled for small schools in 2006. Oran, Kelly, Bell City, Altenburg and Kelso had scores in the top 10 in the state in one or more categories in 2006. They are to be congratulated on a job well done.

Many schools offer their students incentives such as snacks, extra recess, field trips and parking tags in hopes they will do well. That is the biggest problem with NCLB. Because the tests are scored as aggregates that have no bearing on students' grades, students don't take them as seriously as they would another test.

Texas, where the NCLB was born, is moving away from a single standardized test for the upper grades. The Texas Senate Education Committee has approved a format for giving seniors year-end exams that would account for 15 percent of a student's final grade in the course. To graduate, students would be required to achieve a cumulative score averaging at least 70 on each test.

Standardized tests that gauge how well students are learning as a group don't mean much to the students who must take them and end up penalizing whole schools for deficiencies in teaching subgroups.