A steeper, better road to graduation - Feature

Education Next, Winter, 2001 by John H. Bishop

Students learn more and their high-school diplomas become more valuable when they must pass a curriculum-based exit exam like France's Baccalaureate in order to graduate. So why isn't the United States following Europe's and East Asia's lead?

PROMOTERS OF SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS based on rigorous testing often point to the high achievement of secondary-school students in those European and East Asian countries that use curriculum-based exit exams such as France's Baccalaureate and England's GCSE and A-level exams. Such exams can carry extremely high stakes. In England, for instance, they effectively determine whether students are eligible to enroll at a university and to which university and field of study they are admitted. In the United States, the only worthy comparisons are New York's famed Regents exams and a more recently developed system in North Carolina. Traditionally, students in New York who passed the Regents exams in various subjects, all tied to the state's curricula, received a more prestigious diploma that signaled their mastery.

While a number of states, including Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and possibly California, are phasing in or plan to develop a system of rigorous curriculum-based external exams, most states have chosen instead to administer minimum-competency exams. Known generally as exit exams, students must pass minimum-competency exams like New Jersey's High School Proficiency Test (HSPT) to graduate from high school. These exams usually test basic skills in English and mathematics, rarely testing students' knowledge of science, history, or other subjects. Eighteen states required the graduating class of 2000 to pass minimum-competency exams; another 11 states are developing or phasing in such exams, Five states--Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, and Pennsylvania--put on transcripts and honors diplomas students' scores on state tests taken in the 10th and 11th grades, but they do not use them as a prerequisite for graduation.

In reality, the United States may never move to a system of truly high-stakes exams along the lines of France's. The ideal of equal opportunity, and education's unique role in advancing that ideal, is deeply grooved into America's national ideology. Sorting and sifting is certainly a part of the U.S. education system (witness the SAT), but the system is also endlessly forgiving; any student of any age, so long as the money or loans are available, can find a university to attend, unlike in some European and East Asian countries. So reformers who routinely invoke the academic excellence of Europe and East Asia should understand the differences between European and East Asian-style curriculum-based exams and the minimum-competency exams being used by many states. Do they both raise student achievement? By how much? What kinds of positive incentives do they create? And what are the negative repercussions, if any?

Curriculum-Based Exams

My analysis of data collected by the 1995 Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) of students in 40 countries shows that curriculum-based exit exams do raise achievement. The study found that students from countries with medium- and high-stakes exit examination systems outperform students from other countries at a comparable level of economic development by 1.3 U.S. grade-level equivalents in science and by 1.0 U.S. grade-level equivalents in mathematics. A similar analysis of 1991 International Assessment of Educational Progress data on 13-year-olds in 15 nations found that students from countries with curriculum-based exit exams outperformed their peers in other countries by about 2.0 U.S. grade-level equivalents in math and about two-thirds of a U.S. grade-level equivalent in science and geography. Analysis of data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's study of the reading literacy of 14-year-olds in 24 countries found that students in countrie s with rigorous, curriculum-based exams were about 1.0 U.S. grade-level equivalents ahead of students in nations at comparable levels of development but lacking such exams. The final study of the effects of curriculum-based exams compared students living in different Canadian provinces. Students attending school in provinces with rigorous exam systems were a statistically significant one-half of a U.S. grade-level equivalent ahead of comparable students living in provinces without such exams in math and science. Other estimates show similarly positive impacts of curriculum-based exams (see Figure 1).

Why do students in nations and provinces with rigorous exams learn more? How do curriculum-based exams influence school policies and instructional practices? The data show that curriculum-based exams are associated with neither higher teacher-pupil ratios nor greater spending on K-12 education. They are, however, associated with higher standards for entry into the teaching profession, higher teacher salaries (30 to 34 percent higher for secondary-school teachers), and teachers who are more likely to specialize in one subject in middle school and to have majored in the subjects they teach. Teachers appear to be less satisfied with their jobs, possibly due to the increased pressure for accountability under an exam system. Schools, countries, and provinces with rigorous exams devote more hours to math and science instruction, and they build and equip better science labs. The number of computers and library books per student is unaffected by the existence of curriculum-based exams.