"We’ve been rigid in our over-reliance on testing as a graduation requirement"

NECAP is inappropriate graduation requirement, Providence school leaders tell legislators

STATE HOUSE – Providence’s school leaders told a group of legislators last week that while they support rigorous graduation requirements, the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) is not only an inappropriate measure of a student’s readiness, but is in fact hindering their education.

Providence Supt. Susan Lusi and School Board President Keith Oliveira told the lawmakers that having to help students who must retake the test with such high stakes and few opportunities to retake it has made it difficult for high schools to devote the necessary time to teaching the Common Core standards, and that its administration in the fall causes additional problems. 

They argued the test is inappropriate in several ways as a requirement for graduation, and that schools were not able to prepare students in part because the significance of the test, and the rules connected to it, have changed so much, and without enough notice.

“We believe in high standards. We do believe that diplomas need to mean something and we do believe the Providence has a lot of work to do,” Lusi told the legislators. “However, the NECAP disadvantages our students who are already the most disadvantaged.”

Rep. Teresa Tanzi invited Lusi and Oliveira to the State House to elaborate upon comments Lusi made about the NECAP Feb. 26 at a House Health, Education and Welfare Committee meeting. 

Rep. Maria Cimini (D-Dist. 7, Providence), Rep. Donna Walsh (D-Dist. 36, Charlestown, Westerly, South Kingstown, New Shoreham), Sen. Adam J. Satchell (D-Dist. 9, West Warwick), Rep. Marvin L. Abney (D-Dist. 73, Newport, Middletown), Rep. William W. O’Brien (D-Dist. 54, North Providence), Rep. Gregg Amore (D-Dist. 65, East Providence), Rep. Spencer E. Dickinson (D-Dist. 35, South Kingstown), Rep. Frank Ferri (D-Dist. 22, Warwick), Rep. Joseph M. McNamara (D-Dist. 19, Cranston, Warwick) and Rep. Joy Hearn (D-Dist. 66, Barrington, East Providence) also joined the discussion.

“This year’s 9^th, 10^th and 11^th graders have been taught the Common Core for two, three or four years, but are being tested by the NECAP because of our state’s failure to align the graduation requirement with the curriculum. We’ve been rigid in our over-reliance on testing as a graduation requirement and at what cost?” said Representative Tanzi (D-Dist. 34, South Kingstown, Narragansett). “There’s no sensible reason that our state has insisted on the NECAP as a graduation requirement, and our students are paying the price.”

Lusi and Oliveira said that in the time since the NECAP began developing, Rhode Island went from using it to measure schools’ and systems’ improvements under No Child Left Behind policies, to a graduation requirement whose failure to meet could not be forgiven even if a potential graduate had done well on all of the other multiple measures that are expected of him or her. Rhode Island, they said, is the only state in the NECAP consortium that uses the test as a graduation requirement. 

Additionally, Rhode Island will replace the NECAP next year in favor of another test that measures Common Core learning, so the rules will continue to change for Rhode Island high schoolers.

Among the NECAP’s flaws, said Lusi, is that it is administered to juniors in the fall, when many are still catching up on what educators call “summer learning loss.” Evidence has shown that disadvantaged students – special education students, English language learners and the poor – suffer the most summer learning loss, which compounds the disadvantages they already have. English language learners alone constitute at least 19 percent, but as much as 25 percent of Providence students, she said. 

And unlike the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), which is a graduation requirement in our neighboring state, the NECAP offers next to no help – other than the general directions, such as the necessity of using a No. 2 pencil – in any language but English.

While the MCAS was designed as a student proficiency measure, the NECAP wasn’t, and only in 2011 did this year’s seniors learn that it would be used as a graduation requirement, Lusi argued. The first class that had to pass the MCAS to graduate had a decade’s notice, during which time the test was adequately studied, and the students took it several times.

Other rules also keep changing, but without enough notice for students to necessarily take advantage, she said. For example, partway through this school year, the Department of Education announced that students who fail the NECAP but are accepted by a non-open enrollment college or programs like Americorps or City Year can graduate. 

But had they known with enough notice, many of the 605 Providence seniors who haven’t met the NECAP requirement yet would have applied to more or different colleges to increase their chances, she said. And while the Department of Education keeps adding more alternative tests that students can use to meet the requirement if they’ve still failed to pass or make enough progress on the NECAP, those who took the last retest won’t know whether they’ve passed it until April. 

Lusi said the result is her district is trying to get them to take alternative tests in the meantime to cover their bases, even though it might be unnecessary.

The fact that more and more alternatives are necessary is a red flag, said Oliveira.

“If we’re building all these exemptions to the policy, isn’t that evidence that the policy is flawed?” said Oliveira.

He added that another problem is that seniors who know they’ve failed to meet the NECAP’s requirements and know they won’t get a diploma have no motivation to continue attending school for the rest of the year. The result, he believes, will be more dropouts