We have been hearing for over a year now that Oregon’s CIM (Certificate of Initial Mastery) would be going away as Oregon shifts to an era of steeper diploma standards. However, last Friday afternoon the State Board of Education decided to give the CIM some teeth. They selected the current 10th grade CIM assessments and performance levels as a standard for the essential skills assessment in math, reading, and writing. In the past the CIM was viewed as an enhancement to the diploma, students who could pass these tests were special, they showed advanced skills and knowledge and graduated with a CIM.
Beginning with this year’s 8th grade students all children will need to pass at this level on this test (or alternate measure) in order to graduate at all. In 2007 about 65% of Oregon’s students passed the reading test, 55% passed the math test, and 54% passed the reading test…and if you look at the number of students that passed all three the rates dip closer to 40%. Add to that requirements for passing work samples in math, writing, and speaking and the numbers could sink even further. The state’s dropout rate in 2006-07 was 4.4%, however in that same year close to 60% of the students did not pass all of the requirements that will be in place for students entering high school next year. We educators have a job on our hands.
Oregon has lived with what we all called high stakes testing for years. Our teachers are sometimes judged by the scores their students receive on these tests. Are schools receive report cards based on student performance on these tests. And most recently schools have faced economic and programatic sanctions based on performance on these tests. All of those now pale. This week in Oregon we truly shifted into the arena of high stakes testing. Now students’ future opportunities depend on the outcome of the academic measures developed by the state and districts in Oregon.
It is my belief that we have an obligation to ensure our students graduate, whether or not they believe it is important. Our 14-17 year-old students must not have their future opportunities limited by dropping-out of high school. Our job just got a lot more difficult. The level of academic performance required for a diploma just took a significant jump, we will need to make a commensurate jump to respond so that our students are prepared for this new challenge.