Every high school senior should be required to earn a Certificate of Initial Mastery to graduate from high school.
The CIM tests are ineffective and should be abolished.
Those, at least, are two of the arguments put forth in recent months by advocates and opponents of the controversial 14-year-old standardized test program given to Oregon students in grades 9-12. While some members of the Oregon Board of Education believe the tests should become mandatory for graduation, members of the Oregon House of Representatives face five bills that would end the program.
One of those bills was approved April 28 by the House Education Committee and will likely be heard this week, according to a press release from committee chair and CIM opponent House Representative Linda Flores (R-Clackamas).
The optional certificate is awarded to students who meet Oregon standards for math, writing, science and speech skills on a variety of tests and work samples evaluated on a standardized rubric.
Fewer than one in three Oregon high school students earned a CIM this year, up about six percent from 2001, according to Oregon Department of Education statistics released April 18. About 60 percent of
seniors graduated with a diploma.
Ongoing controversy
The CIM program has been a subject of controversy since the Oregon Legislature’s Education Act for the 21st Century created it in 1991. It was amended in 2003 to include additional assessments to align it with the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires assessment throughout a child’s education.
Oregon Board of Education Chairman Steve Bogart said although CIM has been “integral” to the board’s ongoing discussions about the state’s entire assessment system, the system came under scrutiny two years ago when a “serious question was raised as far as the integrity of the math problem-solving elements.”
Those problem-solving assessments were suspended by the superintendent.
Bogart added that the board wants to be sure that results of assessments are accurate and valid.
“When one thing is questioned, you begin to question everything,” he said. “It doesn’t negate the fact that if we’re going to be providing education to students, we have to be able to measure their progress. We have a system in place that still, as a whole, is valid and reflective of our educational system and the progress of our students.”
Graduation requirement
Some board members have even talked informally about making CIM a high school graduation requirement, Bogart said.
He said doing so would be one approach to implementing an assessment system that reflects learning, adding that current graduation requirements don’t adequately prepare students for higher education.
He acknowledged that only about 30 percent of students achieve the CIM, saying an ongoing challenge facing the board is how to raise student achievement without compromising expectations or standards.
Flores said parents were initially ensured CIM would not become a graduation requirement and making it a requirement might
require collective bargaining.
A part of University admissions
University Director of Admissions Martha Pitts said CIM scores are used in the admissions process as part of the Proficiency-based Admission Standards System, one of the factors her department evaluates if a student does not meet standard entrance requirements. Students who receive a 3.25 GPA and 16 college preparatory credits are guaranteed enrollment to the University.
Pitts said PASS is one of many factors
her department considers when reviewing a student’s qualifications, including grade trends, course load and extracurricular activities.
“There’s no particular weight
to any of them,” she said. “It’s a comprehensive review.”
Pitts said the CIM’s “main role is really in high school as a counseling tool,” noting that studies have shown a correlation between CIM scores and college success.
“I would say that CIM hasn’t yet been proven to be a predictor of college success,” she said.
A 2002 Oregon University System study comparing students’ performances on 10th-grade benchmarks and their first year of college at OUS universities and Oregon community colleges found that performance
on 10th-grade tests is “closely aligned” with a student’s freshman year college performance.
Pitts said 10th-grade CIM assessments can help students understand what they have mastered at that level and set realistic expectations about attending college or focusing on a certain academic area.
“I think it’s better as that kind of tool than as (an admissions) decision-making tool,” she said.
The study also speculated students would become more motivated to earn the CIM.
“As the performance on standards becomes more closely linked to next steps and advantages when applying to college, it is likely that student motivation to reach higher standards will increase,” according to the report.
Pitts said the role of CIM hasn’t changed significantly, although it does assess more academic areas and has become better understood.
Yet the CIM may still become more closely linked to graduation and admission requirements. Bogart said representatives of his board and the State Board of Higher
Education are conducting ongoing meetings to plan alignment between state high school exit and college entrance requirements.
“Those discussions are now very active,” he said, adding that Gov. Ted Kulongoski is “demanding we do something as far as aligning our education system.”
Bill to abolish CIM
Plans for the CIM may be aborted if House Bill 3162, approved by Flores’ committee in a 4-3 vote last week, passes in both chambers of the Legislature.
The bill would abolish CIM and the Certificate of Advanced Mastery as of 2007. It also calls for the Department of Education to contract with an independent testing organization to develop and implement a new assessment system.
Flores said concern with CIM isn’t new, but this session she’s focused on gathering data.
“I think everybody knows this system doesn’t function as it was intended to,” she said in a press release.
Flores told the Emerald an “off-the-shelf assessment system would provide a standardized, nationally normed protocol, and that is
currently lacking.”
She also said recent testimony has shown that students find “very little value” in CIM and that many employers don’t consider it.
“We have reports from not only educators and parents of students, but students who find CIM to not be beneficial and actually to be a drain on teaching time,” she said.
Bogart said employers who hire workers with only a high school education “haven’t really given value to CIM.” He also said employers who require higher education “don’t look as much” at the CIM.
But Bogart said he believes that if the legislature eliminated CIM, it would “undermine the validity of our whole education system.”
“Basically, what would you measure with, because that’s one of our primary tools,” he said. “By not having it, there’s nothing that we can substitute immediately.”
He said some scholarships are becoming available for CIM recipients and that the bill would also abolish the CAM, which he said would be a loss.
Bogart said the legislature’s actions will affect the board, but it will continue to have discussions about how it “can best design and maintain an
assessment system.”
Flores said a new system could be integrated with “minimal disruption.”
The bill may be heard late this week or early next week, she said.
She added that school districts and schools invested in the CIM methodology could continue the program even if it’s not mandated by state statutes.
CIM funding
The cost of CIM has also been a source of contention. Flores said
the CIM program is a drain on schools’ funding.
A February 2003
D
epartment of Education study estimated the cost of CIM at $21.6 million per year, with
$17 million devoted to activities required by the No Child Left Behind Act.
The study also found $2.5 million more would be required for additional testing in 2005-06.
Yet the study found that “school districts would experience very little direct savings if the CIM were to be eliminated” because the majority of costs incurred by school districts are for instructional time. Costs of the CIM are also difficult to isolate because they are integrated into the curriculum, the study found.
A different survey conducted in February 2003 by the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators estimated CIM costs at only about $6.2 million.

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