District Clarifies Position on Assessment
The following statement was issued by the Shaker Heights Board of Education and Superintendent Hutchings on March 1, 2015.
Over the last year, the Shaker Heights City School District Administration and School Board have been studying the new State tests and their impact on our schools. Our concerns with State tests started several years ago and escalated in the past year.
Superintendent Hutchings and the Board were among the first district leaders in Ohio to publicly advocate for postponing the new PARCC assessments. Additionally, Dr. Hutchings, as an advisor to the State Superintendent of Education, has repeatedly advocated for postponing PARCC and re-evaluating Ohio’s approach to assessment. While there are many strong opinions in our community, if the District or Dr. Hutchings advocated for actions that violated state law, we could lose that access and that voice. It is important that we keep both over the long term.
The tests themselves are not optional. The State is moving forward with PARCC, despite the concerns of many districts and parents. Therefore, we are in the midst of the first round of these mandated PARCC assessments. Our goal is to administer these mandated tests in a manner that limits the impact on daily instruction and on our students as much as possible.
Recently, many members of our community have grown increasingly concerned about the external focus on testing and the resulting effects on students. Parent advocacy groups such as Test Mania have helped to push this issue to the forefront for legislators and education departments in our state as well as in Washington, D.C. At the same time, members of our community have asked for clarification of where we as a District stand in regards to the current system of testing. While we as a Board and Administration have tried to answer questions as they arise, this summary may provide clarity for our community.
Our beliefs:
- The amount of time spent on externally mandated tests has increased over the years and has reached a point where the time spent on testing and test preparation outweighs the benefits of the tests.
- Well-designed tests can be used to strengthen any educational system. Tests are a time-proven method of illuminating areas of strength and weakness for both students and teachers. As an educational tool, they can provide information for teachers as they refine their instructional program and therefore improve educational outcomes.
- In the past 20 years, and especially since the enactment of the federal law known as No Child Left Behind, tests have taken on a new role beyond the assessment of student learning and have been used as the primary basis of teacher and school accountability systems. In proper context, objective tests can be useful tools for teachers and districts if they identify opportunities for improvement and provide information for the allocation of resources, such as professional development. However, for decades, experts in statistics and educational measurement have decried the use of any single high-stakes test for any decision about individuals, whether they be students or adults. Hence, legislation such as No Child Left Behind has codified practices that are detrimental to students and educators.
- The best test is one that can serve multiple purposes, such as to guide instruction, measure learning, and assess quality of instruction. This has been an area of weakness in Ohio’s testing system over the years. Because the results have not been available for several months and the formula for computing value-added ratings for teachers, schools, and districts has not been transparent, the State tests have historically not been very useful as diagnostic tools. A good test should also be aligned with learning goals. That, too, has been a key limitation of Ohio’s old testing system. All of these issues existed prior to the current PARCC controversy.
- The new Ohio testing system has some significant issues in terms of the technological requirements, the time it takes, and the lack of transparency. There are also multiple unknowns surrounding the PARCC assessments that make it difficult to fully ascertain whether they will be useful. We do not know what is on the tests, how they will be scored, and how the results will be transmitted. The only questions released thus far are samples and practice questions.
- In the future, the PARCC assessments may offer advantages over the State tests that are being phased out (Ohio Achievement Assessments and Ohio Graduation Test). Online assessments can, in theory, assess skills not readily measured on paper-and-pencil tests and can make results available quickly for use by teachers. The Common Core standards reflected in PARCC tests focus more on inquiry and interactive learning than rote knowledge, which could be a positive change. Our District staff members have identified elements of excellence in some of the PARCC groundwork. Unfortunately, it is unlikely we will achieve those benefits in the initial round. To some extent this is a learning year for everyone.
- We do not believe that the implementation of this year’s PARCC assessments rather than the previous OAA’s will substantively affect our ability to teach our students and provide them the rich educational opportunities for which Shaker is known. In terms of the PARCC assessments themselves, we will know far more about these tests after their implementation this year. Therefore, we believe it best serves our students and our teachers to limit any stress associated with the tests. We understand the limitations of any standardized test. Therefore, the PARCC results will not be used by the District in any manner that will impede students’ access to challenging courses or other opportunities.
- We urge families not to opt out of these tests because: (1) in some cases refusal to take a test can affect a student’s eligibility to advance, (2) low participation could cause our District to suffer a penalty, (3) the District receives a score of zero for an opted-out student, which will lower our average test scores and create misinformation about our District, (4) depending on how the State utilizes this year’s results, it could negatively affect teachers’ State-calculated value-added rating, and (5) the rest of your student’s class will still be scheduling instruction around mandated tests.
- The Board and Administration will continue to lobby State officials to bring rational change to Ohio’s assessment requirements. Changes must be made to both the amount of testing and the quality of tests. We believe that local control over testing would allow districts to tailor their assessments to best fit their needs. For example, the State could provide a menu of approved tests, allowing a district to select one that works most effectively within its overall assessment program.
For all of the above reasons, we owe it to our students and teachers to continue to seek a better testing model. We invite the community to join us in advocating for constructive changes in public policy.