Smarter Balanced tests demand more of students locally, statewide

Test Your Knowledge

Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?

Try your hand at these sample questions at: http://sampleitems.smarterbalanced.org/itempreview/sbac/index.htm

About The New Tests

• Washington is one of 20 states that has replaced previous state tests with a new state test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment.

• Replaces standardized state tests including the High School Proficiency Exam and Measurements of Student Progress.

• Aligned to the Washington State Learning Standards.

• Requires more complex thinking for students to explain how they arrived at their answer.

• Washington will spend about $24 million on Smarter Balanced Assessments this year.

• Smarter Balanced FAQs at http://www.smarterbalanced.org/resources-events/faqs/

Washington Badass Teachers Association Rally

• Who: A grassroots group of professional educators, parents and concerned citizens.

• Why: To raise public awareness about testing, parental rights and how parents can get support when opting their children out of standardized tests.

• Public rally: Noon to 3 p.m. Monday at Sylvester Park, 615 Washington St. S.E., Olympia.

• On the Web: Learn more at www.facebook.com/groups/1378337475716232/

Opting Out

• Parents may “opt out” their children from taking the state tests by completing and signing a form and returning it to the child’s school.

• Information including an “opt out” form letter is at http://unitedoptout.com/

This spring, students throughout Clark County and across Washington will take a new standardized test called the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Eleventh-graders and students in third through eighth grade will take the new math and English language arts tests aligned to the Washington State Learning Standards.

It’s not a pencil-and-paper test, but an online test. That in itself isn’t new. Students have been taking state tests online for some time.

What’s new is that it’s an adaptive online test. That means if the student answers a question correctly, the computer gives the student a more challenging question.

What’s also new is that the Smarter Balanced Assessment is a tougher test.

“The challenge is the level of rigor,” said John Steach, deputy superintendent of Evergreen Public Schools.

A deeper level of thinking is required of the student, he said. Rather than just answer the question, students will be asked to explain how they arrived at the answer and cite contextual evidence, Steach said.

“It’s really about depth of knowledge, including the students’ ability to translate learning to new situations,” explained Layne Stampfli, director of curriculum and instruction for Vancouver Public Schools.

School districts in Clark County and statewide have been preparing their teachers and staff to administer the tests, preparing students and ensuring schools have the equipment and tools needed to administer the tests.

In the Evergreen district, a staff member at each school has been assigned as a test coordinator to train teachers about using the Smarter Balanced Assessments. Educators have attended workshops with examples of what types of activities students will complete. They’ve been trained on how to administer the tests. That includes helping their students learn the test’s specialized tools, particularly in the math tests, that are different from normal computer functions.

District technology staff have worked to ensure all of the rooms where testing will occur have adequate wireless Internet connectivity. They also have made sure each school will have enough electronic devices for students to take the tests. Students in the Vancouver district will take their tests on desktop and laptop computers, with the exception of the third-graders, who will take a pencil-and-paper test.

Students in Battle Ground Public Schools and Evergreen Public Schools will use Chromebooks, which are stored on wheeled charging carts and are shared throughout the school. Each school in the state has made a schedule for when each classroom will take the test and the practice tests.

Each grade level test includes about 30 questions with varying difficulty. In addition, students must complete a language arts and math performance task.

The state has mandated that the tests must be given to grades three through eight in the last 12 weeks of the school year and for high school students, within the last seven weeks of the school year.

In Battle Ground, third-graders will be tested first because the state says they must be tested by April 23. Each school building will take two to three weeks to test its students.

Schools will receive their test results only three weeks after tests have been submitted to the state. That is months quicker than the previous state testing, when schools received their results in August, long after the school year had ended.

Because the Smarter Balanced Assessments are more rigorous than the previous tests, educators expect this spring’s tests scores to be low. They won’t be comparable to previous year’s test scores. The first year of testing will set a baseline for the 2016 test scores.

“The state has used the metaphor of climbing Mount Rainier with the old test,” said Dave Cresap, director of school improvement and assessment for Battle Ground Public Schools. “Now we’re going to climb Mount McKinley. We’re on a different mountain.”

The cost

Washington State will spend about $24 million on the Smarter Balanced test this year. That comes to about $27 per student. Of that $27, $10 per student is paid to the Smarter Balanced group. The rest is paid to American Institutes for Research for providing the online test engine and scoring the tests. Even at this cost, officials say this test will save $6 million annually compared with the previous state tests.

The state test has changed before. The Washington Assessment of Student Learning was the state’s test from 1997 until 2009. In 2010 the WASL was replaced by the Measurements of Student Progress and the High School Proficiency Exam. Most students took those tests last spring.

However, several Clark County school districts, including Vancouver and Battle Ground, had some of their students take the Smarter Balanced field tests last spring. It was an opportunity to do a trial run of the new testing format and to find what worked and what didn’t.

Testing critics

So much emphasis has been placed on standardized testing that a growing number of teachers and parents have begun to question whether spending so much time on standardized tests is beneficial to students, the learning environment and the joy of learning and teaching.

One of the most vocal groups, the Badass Teachers Association, began at the national level, but now state and local chapters have formed.

The Washington Badass Teachers Association is holding a public rally at Sylvester Park in Olympia on Monday, which is Presidents Day, when schools are not in session.

Some parents have chosen to opt their children out of the state’s standardized tests. When a student opts out of a test, his test score is zero. That affects a school’s test scores. In order for the test to be valid, schools must have at least 95 percent of its students take the tests.