Mastery Tests Not Scoring With Parents or Students

To students at Moorpark High School, a simple quiz can mean the difference between an A and an F.

Or perhaps it isn’t a quiz. Maybe it’s a project, an essay, a memorized poem in a foreign tongue. If the assignment is part of the school’s mastery objectives testing program, it could make or break a student’s grade.

The 9-year-old program is an effort to set a baseline for how much students must learn in order to pass a class. The objectives, administered throughout each semester, are designed to test understanding of such core concepts as working with square roots in math or counting from one to 100 in a foreign language class.

The objectives exist alongside the regular assignments and tests in a class, but the objectives carry a different weight.

Fail an ordinary quiz, and you can still rescue your grade by doing well on other assignments. Fail a mastery objective, and you have to take it over and over until you pass it. If you don’t by the end of the semester, you fail the class, even if you’re pulling A’s in the rest of your course work.

That alarms parents, who have asked the school district to change a system they view as punitive and a threat to their children’s academic records.

The ensuing debate, which will come up before the Moorpark Unified School District board again Tuesday, has centered on one fundamental point: the value of a grade. Parents who want the program changed argue that an F based solely on the failure to pass a single objective means nothing.

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Moorpark High Principal John McIntosh counters that if schools don’t make sure students learn a minimum in their classes, their grades are just as suspect.

“If you attend class all the time, and you get 60% [on schoolwork], what kind of competency is that?” he said. “It’s no wonder we get criticized, because our standards are so low. Where does it say that every student has to get a high school diploma?”

School board members, and even parents critical of the program, say they don’t want to see it scrapped. Instead, district officials are considering changes that would make the tests less of a burden for students. But any possible revisions would probably wait until after the current school year.

As it stands, students work on the objectives--quizzes, papers, oral presentations and other assignments--throughout the school year and must redo failed objectives until they pass. In some classes, students can pass with a 70% grade on each individual objective. In others, 80% is needed.

Every five weeks the school sends home grade updates, and students who have not passed an objective--whether it’s a paper or a four-point quiz--receive an incomplete for that class. If they have not passed all objectives by the end of the semester, they fail.

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Although the Moorpark program is unusual in its details, it is part of a larger movement toward finding new ways to assess student performance and hold students accountable for their education.

The Oxnard Union High School District, for example, is working with seven elementary school districts to develop a system that will establish performance standards for language arts and math in grades seven through 12, said Gary Davis, the district’s assistant superintendent for education services. The district also hopes to expand that system into science and social science courses.

At Ventura High School, the social studies department is creating a system similar to Moorpark’s, in which students may be required to perform extra classwork or possibly attend summer school if they fail to demonstrate mastery of a set of core ideas, said Principal Henry Robertson. If the system, which should be in place for the next school year, works out, the school may devise similar standards for other departments, he said.

“We are all, I think, in agreement that we need to look again at standards,” Davis said. “We have a lot of people telling us what they expect of us.”

Moorpark High students, however, alternately describe the mastery objectives as a worry and a waste of time.

“We do all the work, and it all comes down to one test, and if you fail it, you fail the class,” said junior Omar Lara, 16.

“You’re just taking tests to take tests,” said 16-year-old Jose Vaca, a sophomore. “Some of them are really easy. But then there’s no point.”

Several students complained that the objectives put them at a disadvantage when competing for college admission against students whose high schools lacked a similar program. Even if students pass all of the objectives, they say, studying for, taking and retaking the tests eats up time that could be spent on papers and finals. Students at other schools don’t face the same burden, they say.

“They’re the ones getting the A’s and Bs, while we’re getting incompletes,” said junior Christine Choate, 16.

Another junior said an objective cost her a passing grade in an English class in which she said she would otherwise have received a B or a C.

“I failed a Latin root objective, and I failed the class,” said the student, who preferred to give just her first name, Katie. “I got grounded for three months.”

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Some parents say the system actually discourages students from taking more advanced classes for fear that they may run into problems passing the objectives.

“The kids are sitting here thinking, why should I take the harder class with the harder objectives?--I’ll take the easier class,” Gary Hirth said. “It’s a negative motivator.”

A group of parents, calling themselves Parents Advocating Student Success, has taken its concerns to the high school administration and the school district. In November, the school board listened to an in-depth discussion of the program, with presentations by McIntosh and Linda Moyer, a parent who has spearheaded efforts to change the program.

Acting on parents’ concerns, high school administrators have already made some alterations in the program, McIntosh said. In previous years, students who failed objectives received Fs on their five-week progress reports instead of incompletes. The change was made at the start of this semester after McIntosh discussed the program with parents.

School board members have suggested several possible other changes to the program. The tests could be made just one part of the overall grade, not something that can determine the grade outright. Students could also be given more time to make up failed objectives.

That would mean that students who had not passed some objectives by the end of the semester would receive an incomplete instead of an F on their semester grades and would get a set amount of time to make up the work.

Those possibilities will be considered by a committee of administrators and teachers who will review how the district assesses student achievement in all its grades, Moyer said. Moyer, who will also serve on the committee, said the committee may have recommendations ready by March.

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In the interim, Moyer and other parents have asked the school board to suspend the program until the review is finished and changes can be implemented. The board is scheduled to discuss that request Tuesday.

Several board members said, however, that while they thought the program could be improved, they did not want to lose it.

“It’s an excellent effort on the part of the high school to make sure that a high school diploma means something,” said board member David Pollock.

Even parents pushing for changes agree that the program’s basic idea is good.

“We feel there’s a place for mastery objectives,” said Moyer. “But the weight given to these is punitive.”