1. 2006 ISAT Reading and Math Scores in Chicago and the Rest of the State. Research Brief
- Author
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Consortium on Chicago School Research, IL., Easton, John Q., Luppescu, Stuart, and Rosenkranz, Todd
- Abstract
When 2006 Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) scores were released in March 2007, there were many questions about the comparability of the 2006 test to earlier ISATs. The 2006 ISAT was a new test, with new items, a new format, new timing requirements, and new scoring procedures. Many people were skeptical about whether it was appropriate to compare 2006 results to prior ones, especially given dramatic improvements reflected by the new test. Because this controversy drew so much attention, perhaps less attention was paid to a careful analysis of the 2006 results in their own right. This data brief looks more thoroughly into the 2006 test results for Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Chicago results are compared to those for all other students in the state of Illinois. Test scores within racial/ethnic groups are examined, comparing African-American, Latino, White, and Asian students in CPS to their counterparts in the rest of the state. The study found that CPS relative performance is better in upper grades than in lower grades in comparison to students in public schools in the rest of Illinois. This is especially true in reading and especially true among African-American and Latino students, who constitute nearly 90 percent of CPS enrollment, suggesting that that longer enrollment in CPS leads to better relative performance, a finding not suggested previously. An additional unexpected finding is that reading performance in CPS looks stronger than math performance in comparison to the rest of the state, particularly in the upper grades. Overall, findings show that the big gaps between students in CPS and in the rest of the state disappear when racial/ethnic groups in CPS are compared to their counterparts in the rest of the state. The study concludes that these findings suggest that CPS does relatively better with traditionally underserved populations than the rest of the state does and that ways to improve can be found in Chicago rather than elsewhere. Observing,however, that significant gaps remain between African-American and Latino students on the one hand and White and Asian students on the other, the study notes that, wherever solutions are sought, disparities between minority and nonminority students that need to be redressed. (Contains 5 endnotes, 7 figures, and 3 tables.)
- Published
- 2007