Minimum Competency Testing

1
Minimum Competency Testing

• Do you mean that you spent a billion dollars
  and you dont know whether they can read or not?
  
• John F Kennedy

2
History and Policy Context of Minimum Competency
Testing

• The post-Sputnik - many educational
  reformsinitially targeted to science and
  mathematics educationwere instituted in the
  United States, minimum competency programs became
  popular in this country.

3
Problems with these early minimum competency
testing

• There was not an agreed upon definition of
  minimum competency as a result, policymakers
  defined these requisite skills within each
  jurisdiction (Winfield, 1990).

4
Minimum competency testing policies were
originally intended

• To add meaning to a high school diploma i.e.,
  students had to demonstrate at least minimum
  levels of knowledge and skills if they were to
  graduate or at least move on to the next grade
  level.
• For graduation, it was assumed that these
  minimum levels would translate into successful
  job performance.

5
Theoretical Assumptions of Minimum Competency

• These fall into three main categories of
  assumptions
• workplace readiness,
• school reform,
• and learning theory.

6
Workplace Readiness.What is it?

• Fortunately, the Secretary of the U.S.
  Department of Labor undertook defining the skills
  and knowledge U.S. student will need to be
  successful in the work force.

7
Workplace Know-How

• Workplace Competencies Effective workers can
  productively use
• ResourcesThey know how to allocate time, money,
  materials, space,
• Interpersonal skillsThey can work on teams.
• InformationThey can acquire, evaluate, organize,
  communicate, and process information.
• SystemsThey understand social, organizational
• TechnologyThey can select equipment and tools

8
Workplace Know-How

• Foundational Skills Competent workers in the
  high-performance workplace need
• Basic SkillsReading, writing, mathematics,
  speaking and listening.
• Thinking SkillsThe ability to learn, to reason,
  to think creatively, to make decisions, and to
  solve problems.
• Personal QualitiesIndividual responsibility,
  self-esteem and self-management, sociability, and
  integrity.
• (From SCANS,
  1992, p.6).

9
Beliefs about School Reform

• Proponents of competency testing programs argue
  that use of such tests creates incentives for
  low-performing schools and students to improve
  their performance

10
Beliefs about School Reform

• There appears to be evidence that this strategy
  works, in the sense that it produces a rise in
  test scores.
• The Resnicks (1992) argued that whether we like
  it or not,
• (1) you get what you assess... and (2) you do
  not get what you do not assess...

11
Lake Wobegon Effect

• All the women are strong, all the men are
  good-looking, and all the children are above
  average

12
Performance Indicator Loses Its Usefulness When
Used As An Object Of policy

• The clearer you are about what
• you want to test, the more
• likely you are to get it, but the
• less likely it is to mean
• anything.

13
Beliefs about Learning

• This approach to testing is closely linked to
  behaviorist learning theory.
• Behaviorism expects learning in a given domain
  to be the sequential accumulation of requisite
  skills, therefore testing should occur at each
  specific learning step. While this may appear
  logical, its not always true.

14

• These new developments in human learning theory
  challenge the factory model of education and the
  adequacy of the one size fits all' presumption
  of standard assessment (Mislevy, 1996, p. 12).

15
Our believe in basic skills is wrong

• The facts-before-thinking model of learning
  according to Shepard, 1991 was just wrong.
• Current information from cognitive psychology
  indicates that students DO NOT necessarily need
  to possess all of the essential basic skills
  before moving on to more complex content.

16
The Macnamara Fallacy

• The first step is to measure whatever can be
  easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes.
• The second step is to disregard that which cant
  easily be measured or to give it an arbitrary
  quantitative value. This is artificial and
  misleading.
• The third step is to presume that what cant be
  measured easily really isnt important. This is
  blindness.
• The fourth step is to say that what cant be
  easily measured really doesnt exist. This is
  suicide.(Charles Handy, The empty raincoat, 1994
  p219).

17

• We start out with the aim of making the
  important measurable, and end up making only the
  measurable important.

18
Another troubling assumption

• The use of basic competency tests relates to
  the expected unidimensionalilty of the domains
  (e.g., subtraction, spelling).

19
It follows from the assumption of sequential
mastery!!!!

• The domain, as represented on the test, can be
  ordered along a difficulty (complexity)
  continuum. Items on minimum competency tests are
  generally targeted for a certain level along this
  slope.

20
Knowledge from cognitive psychology informs us
that

• Most students do not have to acquire knowledge
  according to a perfectly ordered sequence.

21
Intended Effects

• 1. Improvement in basic mathematics skills
  (Frederiksen, 1994).
• 2. Increase in basic reading achievement
  (Winfield, 1990).
• 3. Increase in test scores (Frederiksen, 1994).

22
Unintended Consequences

• Increasing dropout rate for more successful
  students (Griffin Heidorn, 1996, Reardon,
  1996).
• 2. Narrowing curriculum (Lomax, West, Harmon,
  Viator, Madaus, 1995 Shepard Dougherty,
  1991).
• 4. Lack of transfer to high-order skills
  (Frederiksen, 1994

23
Unintended Consequences

• SOCIAL ISSUES
• Minimum competency testing has also been
  characterized by its opponents as a racist means
  of denying educational credentials such as high
  school diplomas to minority students, and to
  Black students in particular. This argument is
  based on the failure rate of Black students,
  which historically has been greater than that of
  White students on these and other academic
  achievement tests.

24
Unintended Consequences

• Competency testing essentially contradicts
  current mandates for having students learn
  rigorous content standards.

25
Philosophical and Practical Arguments to this
Position

• Philosophically, it establishes a de facto
  two-track educational system.
• Thus, the gap between the high and low
  achievers will continue to widen.

26

• There have been no evidence demonstrating that
  the use of minimum competency testing positively
  influences the types of skills and knowledge
  needed for work in the 21st century.

27

• Now that we have all of this good news gathered,
  what do we do with it?