Their comments to the North East Missouri Association of Secondary School Principals helped clarify some of the challenges Missouri schools faced this year in the shift to online testing. They also shared goals for testing this school year.
A few notes from the meeting:
-Contrary to the headline, Missouri House Bill 1490 maintains the Missouri Learning Standards, which include Common Core Standards in mathematics and English for the 2015-2016 school year. Currently there are work groups developing new standards, but their progress has been inconsistent, and their deadline is not until October 1st.
-The Missouri legislature has prohibited DESE from working with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium for future state testing.
-The relationship with Smarter Balanced was strained at best this year, as vendors failed to meet deadlines in delivering interim assessments and summative results to DESE. These vendors will not be paid for the services not delivered.
-DESE is currently working to develop new tests, to comply with federal law, for the spring testing cycle in 2016. Several goals for those tests were communicated:
New tests should be computer based and use the same platform as previous tests.
New tests should be aligned to the same standards as previous tests.
New tests should be comprised of roughly the same number of items as previous tests.
New tests should include the same percentage of constructed response items as previous tests.
New tests should be compatible with as many devices as possible.
-By having more control over which vendors are involved with test development, DESE hopes to avoid the confusion produced this year, as many changes were communicated in a short amount of time: unavailabilty of interim assessments, incorrect timelines for results, etc.
-This year's test results will not be used for accountablility but they will be published.
Helwig and Bates were gracious with their time and very understanding of the pressures that changes in testing place on students and teachers. They answered questions and took notes as they listened to stories of the challenges teachers faced in administering the test: faulty sign language applications for hearing impaired students on the listening portion, the absence of character counters when answers had character limits, difficulty with the equation editor.
As a principal, I gained a new appreciation for the complexity involved in delivering state testing. While I know it's my responsibility to keep current on testing updates, I also felt an urge to serve as a good filter for the teachers in my district. While I should always be willing to serve as a source of information for teachers who desire details, I want to make sure teachers don't feel pressured to adjust their practice to every announcement that will inevitably come during the next year regarding testing.
Our teachers need to be primarily concerned with using their professional judgment to provide the best learning environment possible for the unique learners before them. This is what teachers did with excellence last year and this is what they will undoubtably do next year.
As for testing....last year in the spring we fulfilled our obligation to evaluate our students with tests that were computer based and contained constructed response questions. While it seems DESE has an enormous task before them, right now it appears next year's testing cycle will be very similar.
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