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Sunday, February 8, 2009
Governor’s Education reform: ACT Plus as graduation requirement
Gov. Ted Strickland has proposed doing away with the Ohio Graduation Test - the state’s current high school exit exam - in favor of the ACT Plus, a four-part requirement of his own creation.
We’ll start with the obvious: The ACT, the standardized college entrance exam, is a piece of the proposal.
There’s no indication so far of when this change might occur and details of the how, who, when and where are pretty fuzzy. Ohio Superintendent of Instruction Debra Delisle will lead a committee dedicated to the ACT Plus implementation with the expectation of some answers by the end of the year, according to Strickland’s education policy adviser, John Stanford.
One thing we do know is that the state would pick up the cost of the test; it would probably be difficult for the state to require it and force students and parents to pay the tab. Stanford also said last week that the state would likely pay for the cost of additional tests for students who do not reach the set standard on the test.
But we don’t know what the standard would be. That’s one of the things Delisle’s group would be tasked with deciding. It’s also unclear how many chances students would get to “pass” and whether they would take it as sophomores or juniors or another grade.
Strickland’s team favors the ACT as a measure of a student’s preparation for life after college over the OGT which is based on what a 10th grade student should be able to do but is our measure for graduating.
Here are a couple of the questions I’ve been thinking about on this subject since Strickland announced his proposals:
“Passing:” What benchmark the state would establish as “passing” for the ACT is the big one. The average national score for 2008 was 21.1. Ohio’s average was slightly higher at 21.7. The average has been relatively stable over the last decade, going from 20 in 1999 to 21.1 in 2008, so fluctuations wouldn’t be too much of a concern.
Other states: Five states use the ACT as a graduation requirement, according to Ed Colby, the media relations representative for the ACT, but none requires that students earn a particular score to graduate. Instead, the requirement is simply that they take the exam.
Those states are Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Wyoming. Illinois and Michigan use the test as one of a few required for graduation. The other three use only the ACT; Wyoming gives the option of the ACT or the ACT WorkKeys exams, which focus more on workforce skills.
The tests are administered to juniors in the spring on a school day in all five states.
Relevancy: A committee convened by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling recommended last fall issued a report that recommended to colleges and universities to drop a test requirement for admissions.
The report favors subject exit exams over the standardized tests and recommends that schools drop minimum-test-score requirements for aid. Many schools have already gone this direction, including Wittenberg University.
In the New York Times article, you’ll see that some college admissions officials believe the ACT and SAT are not reliable indicators of a student’s future success in college. I asked Stanford last week why the governor’s office thought it would be a good measure to test Ohio’s students.
He said that the report recommended not using the ACT/SAT as the sole factor and Strickland’s plan included three other measures, so the ACT would not be the only component.
So now we’re at the other factors, which are not very fleshed out at this point and will also be part of Delisle’s committee’s work.
End of course exams, like the ones the college panel recommended using, would be part of the requirement. Those exams would test students on core subjects, likely to include at least the ones we test with the OGT now: Reading, Writing, Science, Social Studies, Math.
Service Learning project: The state would require some type of service learning project to graduate.
Senior thesis/project: There would also be a senior thesis or senior project as the final component.
A student would have to meet a composite score on all four parts of the ACT Plus to be eligible for graduation but we don’t know what that score would be.
What do you think of the ACT Plus?
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Governor to tour high school
Gov. Ted Strickland will be in town this week and plans to tour Springfield High School, according to a release from his office.
Strickland will tour the newly-opened school on Home Road at about noon Thursday, Feb. 12, according to his office. Then he’ll head down to Hamilton to tour their freshman building.
It looks like there may be time for questions from the press on Strickland’s education funding and reform plan. Post your questions here and I’ll take them with me Thursday.
We had some pretty detailed coverage of the funding plan over the weekend and keep an eye on the blog for more this week on various aspects of Strickland’s proposed reform.
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