Bill Evers Comments on
the STAR Mathematics Tests

Bill Evers of Stanford's Hoover Institution spoke on KCBS radio on June 30, 1999. This was the day that the scores from the first STAR results with augmented items to match the California standards were released.

To paraphrase some of his remarks, the following points were made:

• Students should be getting 80-85 percent of the items correct if they are prepared for the next grade's work as outlined in the State Math Standards. The results show that students are getting less than 50 percent correct.

• The results in grades 2-7 confirm what haas been thought--California students are a year or two behind average students in the top-performing countries.

• The results from Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II (only students taking these courses take these tests) show that students are either not learning the material or that they are being given courses in which the content is watered down. [Note: The results may also suggest that students are not sufficiently prepared for these courses.]

• The scores this year are a baseline--a basis on which to judge improvement in future years. The scores should have no high-stakes consequences for individual students.

• Various people have called the test unfair because students were not prepared. The Standards were adopted in 1997 and posted on the Internet in Dec. 1997. The content of mathematics is not new or surprising. Districts and schools could have upgraded courses and adjusted textbooks and supplementary material accordingly. In any case the State has made $1 billion available for standards based textbooks and recently designated a large number of textbooks as standards-based--so there should be no problem along these lines in future years.

• It will take 3-7 years of hard work to bring California students up to international levels. How long it takes depends on how hard students, teachers, school officials, and parents work at it.