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Testing opt-out

Legislature wrong to play chicken with federal-education dollars

While reasonable people can agree that testing for students in Colorado’s K-12 schools can use some fine-tuning so as to reduce the amount of time spent on standardized assessments – particularly those mandated by the state according to federal guidelines – that same reasonableness must acknowledge that some state testing is essential to gauge schools’ effectiveness.

The answer, then, is to analyze and restructure the testing rubric – not encourage families to eschew the assessments altogether. The Colorado Senate, though, chose the latter option Monday.

In giving initial approval to Senate Bill 223, the Senate is potentially placing at risk more than $300 million in federal-education funding that hinges on state participation in assessments of state-adopted standards. While the sentiment behind the bill is somewhat sympathetic – that kids are tested too much and in ways that are too onerous in terms of duration and frequency – fixing the problem will not come by allowing students to skip the test. Doing so undermines a very necessary component of the education system: accountability. Like it or not, there must be a mechanism for gauging if and how are schools are performing in teaching students the materials deemed necessary by the state for a robust education in Colorado.

These are not necessarily federal standards, though the state standards do align with the Common Core requirements that dictate what students should learn with respect to language arts and math. Colorado goes further with its social studies and science standards, for which it must also assess student proficiency, but the standards themselves are state-derived.

State-required assessments have drawn ire from students, parents, teachers and administrators for decades and, as such, are seemingly in a constant state of reinvention. That is owed to the fact that previous iterations of the tests have been deemed problematic for various reasons, as well as the evolving standards by which students – and, more importantly, their schools – are being measured. What has not changed, though, is these state tests’ fundamental goal: to provide an accountability measure to ensure that schools are effectively teaching students what they are expected to learn.

From parents’ and students’ perspectives, this is not a particularly compelling reason to spend 10 hours or more each year on testing required by the state and federal government that does little to inform instruction for any individual student. Nevertheless, there must be some means by which to show how well schools are doing, and standardized testing is one proven method. The bottom line is that students who attend publicly funded schools should be expected to participate in measures of those schools’ effectiveness – particularly when significant funding is on the line.

Federal guidelines require states to test students in math and language arts – based on state-adopted standards – every year from grades three through eight, and once in high school. States must also test once at each level – elementary, middle and high school – for state-adopted science standards. If less than 95 percent of the state’s students fail to do so, it places critical federal funding at risk. Further, it puts individual schools or districts in jeopardy of lowered accreditation ratings. These sanctions can hardly be deemed beneficial to students or worth the inconvenience of the testing itself. The Legislature is considering a far more proactive and practical package that would reduce some of the state testing requirements, while still keeping them in line with federal standards. That is a better direction to go. Offering students exemption from a critical accountability piece of public education will not improve the system. The Legislature should reject SB 223.



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