State Might Keep Alternative Graduation Assessment

State Might Keep Alternative Graduation Assessment

Rather than eliminate the Special Review Assessment, which is used as an alternative to the state’s high school graduation exam, the state should strengthen the administration and scoring of the process, Commissioner of Education Lucille E. Dav y recommended to the state Board of Education Jan. 9.

In 2005, the state board voted to phase out the SRA after then-Education Commissioner William Librera said it was being over-used by some schools and had become a backdoor to a state-endorsed diploma.

Last Wednesday, Davy submitted a draft resolution to the board, to rescind the earlier decision. The board would vote on the resolution in March.

Scoring Process Improvements to the SRA would go into effect in 2009-2010 under Davy’s proposal. They would include setting a specific timeframe for assessing students, using a private testing firm to distribute assessment materials to school districts, and having panels of teachers score the assessments at regional centers, rather than students’ schools.

Concerns about the SRA “arise largely from procedural deficiencies,” education department officials wrote in a paper submitted to the board, adding that “these deficiencies are capable of being remedied.”

Drop in Use Assistant Education Commissioner Jay Doolan noted that the number of students earning a diploma through the SRA, instead of the state’s standard High School Proficiency Assessment, dropped from over 15,000 in 2005 to approximately 11,400 in 2007. He attributed the decline to awareness of state plans to eliminate the SRA, as well as efforts by school districts to have more students pass the standard test.

Education Commissioner Davy said that, in spite of the reduction, the percentage of students earning diplomas through the SRA—approximately 11 percent—remains too high and districts still need to reduce its use.

The SRA gives students who do not pass the state’s standard graduation test the opportunity to demonstrate that they have attained the proficiency necessary to earn a high school diploma.

Recourse The state has a moral obligation to ensure that it does not “create an undue burden on, or impediment to, the individual student’s passage to adult life,” department officials wrote in their paper. “The absolute insistence that every student pass the HSPA, without recourse to other measures or alternatives, would constitute such an undue burden.”

The “improved” SRA process would represent an interim step, according to state officials. In the future, the alternative assessment would need to be aligned with planned changes to the state testing program that would eliminate a single graduation exam in favor of end-of-course tests in several subject areas.