Anxiety, if not downright anger, over new standardized school tests is on full display in Columbus and Toledo.
Schools across Ohio this winter administered the new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exams, a series of online tests that replace the Ohio standardized tests. The tests were built to align with the Common Core State Standards, themselves a subject of scorn by some.
But the new tests, and their potential consequences, have created outcry from a broader segment, with enough opposition to catalyze legislation placed on Gov. John Kasich’s desk on Friday that would hold students harmless this year for any consequences of the tests.
Criticism of the tests center on their implementation, considered sloppy by some; their rigor, and just the sheer amount of time spent on assessment. Exams in reading and math and science — along with social-studies assessments developed with the American Institute for Research — are stretched out over weeks. Winter weather further pushed back regular classroom time.
“What I can say is that in my teaching career I have never experienced a time when so much instructional time has been spent on testing,” said Kay Wait, an instructional planner for Toledo Public Schools.
A Senate Education Committee hearing last week featured testimony lambasting the amount of testing, with some of the criticism coming from local educators like Dan Greenberg, a teacher and president of the Sylvania Education Association.
State Sen. Peggy Lehner (R., Kettering), chairman of the senate’s education committee, will lead a new advisory panel that is to develop recommended changes to Ohio’s testing regime. Ms. Wait, who is also executive secretary of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, was named to the panel.
The Common Core, along with the tests that accompany it, is generally considered more rigorous than previous standards and tests in most states. Tests aligned to the new standards are intended to require deeper thinking than previous assessments.
Criticism hasn’t just been made at the state level. A significant portion of a Toledo Board of Education meeting earlier this month was spent airing board members’ grievances about the assessments.
Board member Lisa Sobecki read off a litany of state and local exams students take, and proposed the board pass a resolution calling for a moratorium on exam consequences.
“I’m almost thinking, when do we have the time to actually educate our kids?” she said.
While the state law, if signed, eliminates student consequences, staff are still partly evaluated by the state tests, and state test scores will still be included on school and district report cards.
Board member Chris Varwig said parents repeatedly complain to her about the exams, criticizing their difficulty. Board President Bob Vasquez said at the meeting that about 50 parents have told TPS they don’t want their children to take the new tests.
“I think what you are hearing is the frustration of the board,” Mr. Vasquez said.
School employee unions are some of the loudest voices against the new tests, despite their support for the Common Core. The American Federation of Teachers, to which the Toledo Federation of Teachers is affiliated, has long called for a moratorium on testing consequences, and TPS’ union presidents have added to that call. A TFT resolution calls for a pause to Ohio’s new standardized tests until districts are prepared to administer them, the tests are proven valid, and they are shown to be fair to all students.
TFT President Kevin Dalton railed against the assessments at recent school board meetings, calling them poorly implemented exams that have made teachers and students “besides themselves.” Mr. Dalton said during a recent Toledo Board of Education meeting that the tests had caused teachers so much stress that one broke down and cried.
“We are driving educators out of the profession,” he said.
An added twist is the test’s new online format. Districts were given the option to take a traditional paper-and-pencil version this year, but about 60 percent of students have taken the exams online.
Some of that is because districts invested heavily in computer infrastructure in anticipation of the tests. TPS spent about $5.5 million adding wireless capabilities at all of its schools and distributing about 6,000 Chromebooks to its buildings.
Union leaders criticized what they said was contradictory or unclear direction from the Ohio Department of Education, claiming, for instance, that teachers were told at first they could not answer technical questions for students, only to later be told they could.
A state spokesman said departmental guidance never changed on computer technical assistance, but said it did clarify that teachers could answer no content-related technical questions.
The new tests have, for some, served as a proxy for criticism of the Common Core, a point that drew concern from Toledo school board member Cecelia Adams. But other board members responded that their concern was not with the standards, but the tests.
Not everyone has found the tests to be particularly stress-inducing. Bob Gulick, the Washington Local Schools’ director of technology, acknowledged apprehension among staff at the start of testing, but said staff and students figured them out quickly.
“It's like anything new,” he said. “It was rough at first, but then they got better at it.”
The Washington district may have been helped in that it only did a portion of its testing online, and the other half on paper.
Ms. Wait said she hopes the advisory panel will have a real conversation among stakeholders to settle differences over state tests, a process that should have been done before the tests were adopted — but late is better than never.
Contact Nolan Rosenkrans at: nrosenkrans@theblade.com or 419-724-6086, or on Twitter @NolanRosenkrans.
First Published March 16, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
