NEWARK – A school system committee recommended no significant changes after reviewing local assessment practices.
At a meeting of the Worcester County Board of Education this week, officials reported that while there was slight overlap among some of the assessments administered to local students, the committee tasked with studying the assessments had no major concerns.
“The recommendation of the committee was to leave things as they are and to come before you and share their findings,” said Amy Gallagher, the school system’s coordinator of accountability and assessment.
Gallagher said Senate Bill 452 required school districts to monitor the amount of instructional time used for assessments. The bill requires school systems to review the amount of time spent testing in odd years and that they review the purpose of assessments and value of their results in even years. Last year’s review determined that Worcester County Public Schools did exceed the accepted amount of testing time (2.2 percent) in grades five, seven and eight.
This year, an even year, a committee of school system officials was tasked with reviewing the purpose of the assessments administered, the time required to administer them, the value of the feedback of the assessments, the timeliness of results and whether there was any duplication among tests.
Gallagher said the assessments currently administered in Worcester County included those mandated by the state (PARCC exams) as well as those mandated locally (the PSAT and SAT).
The committee established that the assessments’ purpose was to ensure college and career readiness.
“There was agreement that the assessment program in place is aligned with state standards and does serve the purpose of meeting the expectation of college and career readiness,” she said.
The committee noted, however, that issues regarding the amount of time allotted for each assessment included the fact that time for national assessments did not include time for directions. In addition, early childhood assessments sometimes required a teacher to be pulled from class to test a child one-on-one.
As far as the timeliness of assessment results, Gallagher said that though results from the government took three months, as written portions of tests were still scored by hand, results in general proved quick and useful.
“In terms of PARCC scores and local benchmarks we get that information much faster and are able to use that to drive the scheduling process,” Gallagher said.
She said that in regard to duplication of assessments, while the committee found some overlap there was no “outright duplication.”
When school board members asked if the committee had concerns regarding teachers “teaching to the test,” officials said that wasn’t really possible.
“We’re teaching kids to think and to apply knowledge,” said John Quinn, the school system’s chief academic officer. “It’s hard to teach to the test…They have to think, look at sources and then come up with an answer. It’s hard to kind of spoon-feed them stuff that they’re going to regurgitate.”
