How significant are TCAP results? One local educator chimes in

As students and families prepare to receive individualized scores from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, one local educator offers insight to help guide interpretation."People get caught up right now with pass and fail, and if you look at statewide news, it's 40% of students in Tennessee passed and about 60% didn't," said Roger Walk, Johnson City Schools' supervisor of educator evaluation, assessment and RTI. "I think it's very important to remember that Tennessee, whether it's third-grade ELA or high school biology, we administer very rigorous tests in our state and that's by design."Walk said that this shift in state testing difficulty happened within the last 20 years, and it's important to keep this in perspective when interpreting TCAP scores. He said that prior to this reevaluation of state standardized testing, it was not unusual to have 90-95% of any particular testing group pass the test."That looked and sounded great, but what we know from that is when we did that, we had students who indeed were not prepared for whatever they were doing after they left public school," Walk said. "With that in mind, as a state it was our goal to norm our tests and norm our tests to reflect a greater expectation."Walk added that that decision has led to an overhaul of state standards and grade level expectations."What our students do now in fifth grade ELA and math might have been something that I as a sixth or seventh grader did 30 years ago," Walk said.Walk said that changing the state academic standards for students is a good way to ensure that they are prepared to move onto the next grade level and succeed."I think folks have to be really cognizant of that in terms of looking at their performance and realizing that it wasn't long ago that a student who is now deemed to be approaching, which is not passing the test…there was a time when that was passing and and that student was good to go," Walk said. "And so for those students who are not at that level, that tells us, those approaching kids, we have more work to do with them….that gives us the best information to say we can do more for this student."Walk said the TCAP, like other assessments, is important to gathering academic insights into students, but it's also useful in understanding how effectively teachers and staff are serving students."Anytime you have an assessment that is reliable and predictable and normed and thousands of students are taking it, then it's valid to look at how your students compare to others and use that information to refine your practices," Walk said. "All that information, it's information about students, it's information about how well our teachers and staff in those schools are providing services to those students…it's very important information."Individual student data is expected to be released in the TCAP Family Portal in July, and Walk urges students and families to remember just how difficult the test really is when interpreting their scores."It's important to understand it's a really difficult test…it's easy to throw stones and say 60% didn't pass," Walk said.It's also important to keep in mind how TCAP scores can be useful in identifying the areas or subjects a student might need additional assistance in, and once these areas are known, students will be able to take advantage of different intervention services offered through the school."(For) those students who are scoring at the lowest level, we're always looking at what services, what programs, what interventions can we do for those particular students in order to decrease that number," Walk said.Moving forward, Walk is focused on providing JCS students with the instructional tools and opportunities that they need to succeed, and wants to remind students and parents that small improvements are important to celebrate too."Students can do it if we give them an opportunity and provide them the instruction that they deserve. They can do it," Walk said. "Again, it's (about) taking every student, every individual student to the next level, and we talk about that but it's really important to see it actually play out in the results."