The state Department of Education is launching initiatives to limit the number of standardized tests and state education Commissioner John King has announced the rescheduling of public forums on the new Common Core learning standards, following criticism from officials and education advocates over the department’s handling of the testing debate.
The department will increase testing flexibility for non-native English speakers students with disabilities, offer grants to help districts review and possibly reduce local standardized testing and work with the U.S. Education Department to eliminate double testing for eighth grade students, wrote King in an Oct. 24 press release.
“Of course, testing is an important part of the instructional cycle and necessary to monitor student academic progress and contribute to decisions at the classroom, school, district, and state levels. However, the amount of testing should be the minimum necessary to inform effective decision-making,” King wrote. “Test results should be used only as one of multiple measures of progress, and tests should reflect our instructional priorities.”
The development earned a cautious endorsement from state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola), who has been critical of King’s handling of the Common Core debate, but Great Neck Public Schools Superintendent Tom Dolan was unimpressed.
“It’s a positive step, but if it’s not followed by several dozen more steps it’s useless,” Dolan said. ““In the words of a character from Jerry Maguire, show me the money. Show me the results.”
The elimination of one eighth grade test is both insufficient and still subject to federal approval, said Dolan, who advocated for more aggressive limitations on testing for high-performing districts like Great Neck.
“A modest proposal might be alternate years, provided the grade performs well the year before,” Dolan said. “Or given that these tests are purportedly designed to predict Regents [exam] results, perhaps schools with the kind of Regents [exam] results that Great Neck and many other Long Island schools enjoy could be waived from tests that measure whether our 11th graders are going to do well.”
When asked whether instituting different standards for high-performing and low-performing schools could allow low-performing students in Great Neck to fall through the cracks, Dolan said the district would take those concerns seriously, but preferred to assess its students internally.
“I think that our board and our community would expect that and hold us accountable to that standard,” Dolan said. “I think we can do that with internal mechanisms that don’t involve so much testing.”
King also announced the rescheduling of public forums on the Common Core learning standards, which were suspended following a contentious initial forum in Poughkeepsie. King blamed the disruptions on “special interests,” and the Poughkeepsie Journal described the audience as an “often critical and loud crowd.”
Forums are scheduled to be held in Nassau County Nov. 13 and Dec. 9 – a development praised by Martins, who had called on King to resign earlier this month should he not reschedule a suspended Garden City forum.
“There are many concerned parents, teachers and administrators who have been questioning these policies for some time. I’m glad to see the commissioner is listening. Testing certainly has a place in our schools, but it cannot be permitted to replace analytical and creative thinking as the centerpiece of education,” Martins wrote in a statement. “Rescheduling forums to discuss Common Core is a good first step in allowing our school communities to address their concerns with the Commissioner directly.”
The Common Core standards, adopted by the state in 2010, are designed to be more rigorous and better prepare students for college and professional careers, according to Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch. Schools across the state and in Nassau County experienced sharp declines in scores following last year’s first set of exams under the new standards, and administrators, educators and parents have voiced concerns about the testing.
Under King’s plan, the state Department of Education sent a proposal to the U.S. Education Department to allow eighth grade students to take only the Regents Exam in Algebra, instead of both the Regents Exam and the Grade 8 mathematics exam.
The state Department of Education is also considering offering a Native Language Arts tests for students learning English. The plan would expand flexibility for alternative testing, including proposals to test students with severe disabilities according to their instructional level rather than age and reward districts for students’ performance on technical education assessments.
King also announced the planned use of Race to the Top grant funds to help districts review local testing “to ensure that all local tests help inform instruction and improve student learning.”
