Oklahoma board raises rigor to restore ‘truth and transparency’ to student testing

OKLAHOMA CITY — Almost a year after Oklahoma lowered the bar for public school students to achieve a proficient score in reading and math, a state commission has raised academic expectations again.

The Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability voted unanimously Wednesday to throw out performance expectations, known as cut scores, that the state set in 2024 and to restore the nationally aligned standard used from 2017 to 2023. Cut scores define what knowledge students should demonstrate on annual state tests to be considered proficient, or performing on grade level.

Maintaining high academic expectations, commissioners said, would shine a light on children who are struggling. 

Lowering expectations only masks poor performance and causes long-term harm to students, said Oklahoma Education Secretary Nellie Tayloe Sanders, who leads the commission.

State records show the now-discarded cut scores labeled students as proficient with significantly worse test results.

“We are committed to being a commission that is working very hard to provide truth and transparency that families can depend on to find out whether their children are ready for life after school,” Sanders said.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education developed the 2024 cut scores with committees of teachers last summer. State records show the Education Department provided the teacher committees with benchmark scores to use as guideposts. 

Although state Superintendent Ryan Walters said he wanted the agency to avoid putting a “thumb on the scale,” those guideposts suggested to the committees that they set lower expectations for student achievement on annual reading and math tests.

The commission approved the resulting cut scores in July, sending proficiency rates spiking statewide. No announcement from the Education Department explained the abrupt increase, leaving school officials suspicious and families unaware that the rising proficiency rates were a result of different scoring methods, not genuine academic improvement.

It wasn’t until news reports, including from Oklahoma Voice, revealed the cut score change that the Education Department acknowledged what happened.

Walters has since urged the commission to recalibrate the cut scores, claiming the process suffered from “political interference.”

“I’m glad that they’re taking action now,” Walters said Wednesday. “I mean, it took them forever to do it. It was pretty common sense. But look, they need to quit shifting the blame and actually do their job.”

The commission hired testing experts to study the process that produced the 2024 cut scores. 

The experts found the Education Department gave incomplete information to the commission when asking for approval of the cut scores in July.

“My opinion is you probably had less than half the information that you probably really needed to make an informed judgment,” said Chad Buckendahl, a testing expert from ACS Ventures who presented to the commission Wednesday.

Crucial information the commissioners were missing, Buckendahl said, was how the new cut scores would widen the difference between Oklahoma’s performance expectations and standards used for national testing. 

That divergence is known as the “honesty gap.”

In 2017, Oklahoma officials sought to limit the “honesty gap” by aligning the state’s cut scores with the national standards used for the Nation’s Report Card, which tests reading and math levels in all 50 states.

While national standards were integral to developing the 2017 cut scores, state documents show the Nation’s Report Card wasn’t considered when the 2024 expectations were developed.

Limiting the honesty gap is “probably the most substantial thing we could do to course correct,” Sanders said.

The Education Department should have included the commissioners and their corresponding state agency, the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability, from the beginning of the cut score setting process, Buckendahl said.

The commission is meant to give input on policy goals that are foundational to setting academic expectations for students, he said. The experts reported the Education Department still hasn’t disclosed what policy objectives it followed when directing the cut score setting process.

The commission’s vote to reject the 2024 cut scores now puts last year’s test results in doubt. 

OEQA executive director Megan Oftedal said her agency will work with the Education Department to decide how to interpret students’ scores from 2024.

She said the previous cut scores, now restored, will apply to 2025 test results.