OP-ED: Deleveling’s First Year — Lower Scores, Grade Inflation, and Spinning the Truth

Last Monday night Superintendent Osborne, Principal Jeff Truppo of Maplewood Middle School, and several teachers coordinated an appearance before the Board of Education to assert to the community that deleveling had been a success. A middle school teacher testified that she "felt very strongly" that deleveling had been a success as Superintendent Osborne nodded his head in approval.  Brian Osborne himself declared, modestly, that deleveling had been "pretty good, not Earth shattering." The Superintendent’s information officer, Paul Roth, created an attractive PowerPoint with convincing-looking tables and graphs purporting to show that the new deleveled 7^th grade classes had not lost rigor, despite the warnings of the anti-delevelers. 

The first problem is that deleveling was supposed to help close the achievement gap and the 7^th grade achievement gap is now larger than it has been in four years, mostly because of lower African-American performance. The second problem is that the data, despite the artful attempts at manipulation and selective omission by the superintendent, show a large drop in rigor and/or massive grade inflation, which is exactly what the opponents of deleveling said would happen.  Conveniently, the Superintendent and his deputies evaded the achievement gap altogether in their presentation on the 7^th grade. Deceptively, they misrepresented data to disguise the enormous grade inflation that occurred.  Although the Board of Education could not catch the distortions in time to challenge Brian Osborne on them at the meeting, the truth cannot be hidden for long.

The facts speak for themselves. Last year's deleveled 7th grade had a 37.7 point achievement gap in the percentage of black and white students scoring Proficient or Advanced Proficient on the NJASK exam.  That’s the largest achievement gap in South Orange-Maplewood in four years.  The final three leveled 7^th grade classes had smaller achievement gaps than the 2010-2011 7^th grade.  The 2009-2010 7th grade had a 30 point achievement gap, the 2008-2009 7th grade had a 33.9 point achievement gap, the 2007-2008 7th grade had a 29.6 point achievement gap.  If this is Brian Osborne’s idea of “pretty good,” then I would hate to see what his idea of a "pretty bad" is. (Source, SOMSD NJASK Results, slide 25)

The decline in African-American performance affects African-American high-achievers even more starkly.  In the first deleveled 7th grade, the percentage of African-American students scoring Advanced Proficient dropped 9.4 points from 14.7% the year previous to 5.3%, while whites scoring Advanced Proficient only dropped 3.1 points, from 37.8% to 34.7%. The DFG and state 7th grade scores as a whole declined, but the African-American score decline in South Orange-Maplewood was much greater proportionally. Even if the 14.7% of African-American 7th graders who scored Advanced Proficient in 2009-2010 was an outlier, the 5.3% of black 7th graders scoring Advanced Proficient is lower than the percentage scores of Advanced Proficient in 2008-2009 and 2007-2008, (7.9% and 5.6%, respectively) meaning that undeniably, the 7th grade did badly.  (ibid, slide 26)

One of several distortions in the administration’s recent presentations was the superintendent’s claim that the 2010-2011 African-American 7^th graders showed “growth” because they went from 4.0% scoring "Advanced Proficient as 6th graders to 5.3% scoring Advanced Proficient as 7th graders. What is inaccurate about that claim is that between the 6th and 7th grades the number of students labeled "Advanced Proficient" on the Language Arts NJASK exam soars statewide.  In the last few years including 2010-11 statewide there has been a doubling or even tripling in the percentage of students scoring "Advanced Proficient" in the 6th to 7th grade transition.  In the previous 6th-7th transition the percentage of black students earning the Advanced Proficient label went from 3.3% to 14.7%.  In the transition prior to that the percentage went from 0.9% to 7.9%.  If last year's African-American 7th graders had grown by as much as the previous year's cohort, 17.8% would have scored "Advanced Proficient," not 5.3%. (ibid)

Moreover, the percentage of white students who scored Advanced Proficient soared from 20.9% to 34.7% between 6th grade and 7th grade. The percentage of Advanced Placement white students in the prior year went from 18.7% to 37.8%.  If last year's African-American seventh graders had grown as much as whites did, 10% would have scored Advanced Proficient, not the oft-cited 5.3% number.  It was a significant oversight by the Board of Education that no one challenged Brian Osborne and Paul Roth on that large inaccuracy. (ibid)

For low-achieving African-American students the news is similarly bad.  The percentage scoring Partially Proficient rose from 35.7% to 47.8% between the last fully leveled 7^th grade and the first deleveled one.  The percentage of black 7^th graders who had scored Partially Proficient also rose from their 6^th grade performance, when only 43.4% had Partially Proficient.  Children recommended for Level 3 but upleveled into Level 4 indeed "struggled mightily."  The percentages of Level 3-recommended students (which includes non-black students) getting D’s and F’s increased from 10% to 21.6% in science, from 13.9% to 18.5% in Language Arts, and from 16.2% to 22.5% in Social Studies.  How can deleveling be called a success when more students are failing classes?  (ibid, slide 25; SOMSD Grade 7 Level-Up Student Outcome Analysis, slides 17, 21, 25)

When Brian Osborne gave his “Grade 7 Level-UP Implementation and Evaluation Report” in August 2010 he gave NJASK scores as two of his most important benchmarks for evaluating success.

• Increase in the percentage of students scoring advanced proficient on state standardized exams. (NJASK)

And then, almost identically:

• Increase in the percentage of students scoring proficient on state standardized exams. (NJASK)  (Grade 7, Level-UP Implementation and Evaluation Report, Slides 4, 19, 20)

When the NJASK results failed to prove his deleveling theory, Brian Osborne didn’t just move the goalpost, he denied it ever existed. At the September Board meeting Brian Osborne, by reputation a “numbers guy” said, "The bottom line can't be about the numbers and the statistics and all that stuff.... The bottom line is that we still have a long way to go to meeting our educational debt. To me...really calling it an achievement gap is really a misnomer. This isn't just about how our students are achieving. This is about how public education as an institution here and elsewhere in our country is paying down an accumulated educational debt to a population that have been outside the power structure, marginalized, under-served for a very long time."

If this isn’t just about how our students are achieving, and the students who come from that under-served group are doing worse, then what is it about? (Source, comment at September board meeting. Does not appear in minutes, but statement is confirmed.)

Brian Osborne has frequently asserted that “education is not a zero-sum game” and that helping lower-achieving students does not harm high- and middle-achieving students. The only support that Brian Osborne and his staff can point to that high- and middle-achievers are doing well is that large percentage of students in the general SOMA population continue to score Advanced Proficient.  The superintendent uses this, with some reason, as evidence that deleveling has not harmed high-achievers or white students. But the NJASK exam is designed to measure how many students are skill-deficient and need extra help. NJASK does not measure advanced skills or knowledge, so it should not be taken as an indicator of how well top students are being educated. Even the Administration does not claim that high ASK scores indicate rigor.

However, from the grade distribution at the middle schools it appears that either the classes either lack rigor or have had extreme grade inflation. Last year, 40% of Level 4 (overall) 7th graders received an A in Language Arts, 47% received an A in Science, and 35% received an A in Social Studies. What indicates grade inflation in Science and Language Arts is that the students who had been recommended for Level 4 received a huge increase in the number of A’s they received and an equally large decrease in B’s compared to the previous year's pre-deleveling Level 4.  Students who were recommended for Level 4 Language Arts had a 21 point increase in receiving A’s (43.4% to 64.4%) over the previous cohort, while there was a 16.7 point drop in B’s (39.6% to 22.9%). Students who were recommended for Level 4 Science had a 19.6 point increase in A’s (53% to 72.4%) but a 14.6 decrease in B’s (45.7% to 31.1%). There were also decreases of Level 4-recommended students getting C’s.  If that’s not grade inflation then what is?  How hard are the better students working if the average student is receiving an A's?  (Grade 7 Level-Up Student Outcome Analysis, slides 17, 21, 25)

In their report to the Board or Education Brian Osborne and Paul Roth disguised the surge in A’s by only presenting the percentage getting A’s OR B’s and showing that those percentages did not change.  This is manipulation to the point of propaganda. Over 90% of Level 4 students in Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts were already getting an A or B anyway, so there was almost no room to increase that. Combining the students getting A or B into one category also completely ignores the fact that in Science and Language Arts there was a huge shift from B’s to A’s! The District’s claim, “The data presented demonstrates the performance of students placed in a course mixed with students recommended for level 3 and level 4 performed comparable to students placed in a course with students recommended for level 4 exclusively” is Just Not True.  (ibid, slide 28)

It’s impossible to determine if all those A’s are grade inflation or “earned” grades on an easy curriculum.  Anecdotes about middle schoolers doing pirate maps, spending a week learning the names of parts of a microscope, and not writing essays more than five paragraphs long aren’t what most people associate with rigor.  Merely because the District repeatedly declares itself rigorous does not mean that it is. 

It is premature to judge deleveling a success or a failure, so Brian Osborne’s comment that in December he would ask for "changes to academic placement in future years" is alarming. There is no evidence that deleveling is narrowing the achievement gap and there is great evidence that it causes grade inflation.  What the NJASK data demonstrate is that students who are academically at-risk need better interventions and stronger classroom support than they currently receive.  What the grade data demonstrate, by all those A’s and anecdotes about easy assignments, is that it time to consider honors classes for 7^th  and 8^th grades.  If Brian Osborne is right that low-achieving students need more rigor, then why doesn’t that go for middle- and particularly high-achieving students as well?  Why is the argument that “education is not a zero-sum game” only employed to the benefit of lower-achievers?  If education really is not “zero sum” then creating an honors class should do no harm to low achievers, just as Leveling Up was supposed to do no harm to high achievers.  If Brian Osborne wants to win back the support of a community of concerned parents of middle- and high-achievers then pivoting in the director of more rigor in the middle school and not more deleveling is the direction to take.

Just as it would be wrong to judge deleveling by one year and by NJASK scores alone, so would it be wrong to call it a success and push to delevel the 8^th grade or 9^th and 10^th grade Science and Social Studies as appears to be likely.  Members of the Board of Education who purport to form their opinions based on data, benchmarks, and results should oppose any proposal to delevel the 8^th grade. The 7th grade deleveling project has a mixed record so far and if Dr. Osborne and the employees he has testify do not volunteer that in public, then members of the Board of Education must.