ANNISTON – Members of the Alabama State Board of Education on Wednesday discussed the possibility of changing the minimum test score that determines whether a student can advance to fourth grade.
The Alabama Literacy Act of 2019, fully implemented this year, aims to have students reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Part of the law requires that students who do not meet the minimum score by the end of third grade — and do not attend a summer reading camp or take advantage of other opportunities to improve the score — be held back another year.
About 6.5% of third graders took a test this spring were below class level after the summer camps.
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Board members discussed changes to a factor known as the conditional standard error of measurement (CSEM), which is factored into a test score to ensure that a student’s performance is accurately captured. CSEM is a range in which a student’s score would be expected to fall if this student were to take the same test over and over again again.
For the 2024 reading tests, the CSEM score was -2.00. The closer the factor is to zero, the more students are reading below grade level.
According to a table presented to board members, a CSEM of -2.00 corresponds to 91.02% of students at or above grade level, while a CSEM of -0.025 would correspond to 77.18% of students at or above grade level.
Tracie West, a Republican who represents the Second District on the board, said there is a perception that the reading test is too easy.
“If the perception … if it went from -1.5 to -1.25, would we try a little harder to get that to happen within a year?” she asked Juan D’Brot, senior fellow at the Center for Assessment and a member of the Alabama Department of Education’s technical advisory committee.
At a working meeting earlier this year Mackey said that internally they use the term “adequacy,” but the law refers to grade level. Rep. Terri Collins (R-Decatur), who sponsored the law, told the Reflector at the time that she believed appropriateness was below grade level.
According to Eric Mackey, the state’s superintendent of schools, the current CSEM rating of -2.00 provides 95 percent certainty that a student is “really below grade level.” Raising the CSEM rating to -1.00 would provide 68 percent certainty, or 32 percent, that “these are not the right students.”
“The increase from 95% confidence to 68% confidence is a big jump,” he said.
D’Brot said the change in the cut score would depend on the risk the board was willing to take.
“The question that I think you have to weigh up is which is the greater risk, transferring students who should have been held back or holding back students who should have been transferred. And I think that also raises legal questions: Where do you want to keep things stable?” he said.
Wayne Reynolds, a Republican who represents the 8th District on the board, said he was more concerned about a “false positive” in which an unready student is sent on.
He said he did not want to let anyone pass who did not have the necessary skills, “be it a lawyer, a doctor or a driver’s license holder.”
Mackey said he believes it is best to make these changes gradually and that there is an obligation to communicate them to districts and other school leaders over the next few months.
“I’m worried because we don’t tell the districts until February and then they do a test in March,” he said.
The State Board of Education attended a two-day retreat in Anniston, the second of the year.
The board also discussed further restrictions on cell phones in schools, something that had been discussed at the previous meeting. Mackey said her resolution to encourage districts to have stricter policies is working.
Another topic of discussion was school safety. Mackey said during a budget discussion on Wednesday that money is needed to implement a number of school safety measures provided for in a bill passed in the last session.
