A majority of students in some Arizona school districts are struggling to meet state proficiency standards in math and English language arts. However most of these students are still graduating.
The latest project from The BEAM, an investigative newsroom at ASU’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, examines why graduation rates do not reflect state standardized test results.
Katie Wilcox and Evan Wyloge, both professors of practice at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the findings of the BEAM project.
Wilcox said the focus of the investigation was to look at “why students are falling behind, what are some of the drivers of that, and then how is the state dealing with it.”
Wilcox said one thing that caught her attention when working on the investigation was the income gap when looking at proficiency standards and how it can play a significant role in addressing a graduation gap.
“So that’s where people have said, ‘Okay, well, if we’re really going to measure growth, we know that students who are coming in, especially from low-income homes are going to have this much higher barriers to climb over,” Wilcox said.
Wyloge said there are talks around revising the school letter grade system. However critics of this move to revise the system will ultimately end up hurting low-income students.
Wilcox noted with these grades and the system it lives within, funding plays a huge role, especially since it determines funding.
“So if your letter grade gets worse, do students leave? And if students leave, do you lose even more funding? So it could create the cycle of even worse outcomes for already poor-performing schools,” Wilcox said.
For more information on the investigation into the graduation gap and state proficiency tests, visit thebeam.org.
