Schools have concerns, ideas about local assessments

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Pushing forward with the development of their schools’ local assessment systems, area educators said recently they have a variety of concerns as well as ideas about how to get the job done.

Mount Desert Island High School has created an assessment system that, among other things, encourages individualized learning plans for each high school student.

For the assessments, “we give kids clear learning targets – they know upfront what we want them to know and be able to do. We give them examples of essays or projects that are good quality and we talk to kids one at a time” when they haven’t performed well on an assessment, said curriculum coordinator Beth Lyons.

The school already has its comprehensive local assessment system in place, and this September – two years ahead of the state’s scheduled date – will begin requiring seniors to pass them in order to get a diploma, she said.

Craig Kesselheim, director of curriculum for Union 98, which serves the Bar Harbor area as well as Cranberry Isles, Frenchboro and Swans Island, said putting a comprehensive local assessment system into place in small, rural elementary schools requires greater flexibility. That’s because they tend to have multiage classrooms with a variety of grades and, thus, have a curriculum different from other schools within the system.

For example, if a school system as a whole decides to give a particular assessment in grade three, then a combined classroom of kindergarten to fourth-grade pupils in Islesford would need to administer that same assessment in a different year based on pupils’ ages and grade level when that particular unit is taught, he said.

Also, in some small island schools, a particular science unit might be taught once every three years, so pupils would learn those concepts either as third-, fourth- or fifth-graders.

“It makes sense to deliver that assessment when it’s appropriate to the curriculum, rather than solely on the grade they are in,” he said.

In SAD 64 (Corinth area), educators are particularly concerned with identifying the kinds of interventions for students who don’t perform well on an assessment, Superintendent Leonard Ney said.

“The interventions we use when kids fail is the most important thing this whole process will yield,” he said. “That’s the biggest question mark – how do you structure those interventions into an existing plan.”

Teachers will have to come up with different educational strategies and replacement tests for each student, while continuing to teach the rest of the class, he pointed out.

“Our hunch is that before we’re finished we’ll have to use a whole range of intervention strategies. The scope and variety of those services will be dictated by the availability of resources we have in terms of staff, space and time,” Ney said.

Different types of interventions work better than others, depending on the age of the student and the subject, he said.

Tutoring may work better for lower grades and not the older students who are involved in so many other activities, he said. Meanwhile, summer school may not be a great alternative for any student because “it’s tough for kids transportationwise, and it’s a tough time of year to ask them to be in school.” Holding students back a year doesn’t work well, according to research, because of the potentially negative social issues, he said.

Hampden Academy principal Ruey Yehle said she’s planning to work with the United Technologies Center in Bangor so students who struggle with traditional pencil and paper tests can retake an assessment by demonstrating their skills and knowledge through the vocational-technical center’s classes.

“Replacements are, in my mind, an opportunity for us to be creative so kids can show in different ways how they know something,” she said.

Kyle Ritter, curriculum director in SAD 22 (Hampden area), pointed out the potential implications for students who don’t meet the Learning Results in 12th grade. According to state guidelines, only students who show on the assessment that they meet the new standards will graduate with a diploma. Some students who successfully complete the courses required of their schools to graduate but fail the assessments may be awarded a certificate of attendance.

But that document likely “won’t be perceived the same way,” Ritter said.

While the U.S. Army apparently will accept students without full-fledged diplomas, the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines have indicated they will not, she said.

“What we’re expecting is that colleges won’t accept it, either,” she said. In addition, students will be limited in the financial aid for which they can apply.

Students probably will end up going to a community college and then submitting their first-year transcripts to their high school principal, “who will evaluate it and decide whether [the student] can be given a Learning Results diploma,” Ritter said.

In Brewer, director of instruction Elaine Emery said schools will need to help parents understand that if a student earns a “3” for meeting the standard, “it’s a great score.”

“Even the best students are going to get many 3’s because a 4 – exceeding the standard – is reserved for only a very sophisticated understanding of the topic,” she said. “Possibly only about 2 to 4 percent of the school population will get 4’s on each assessment. That may be confusing to parents who are used to their children getting mostly A’s.”

The scoring of the assessments was on the minds of at least two other educators. Jeff Valence, associate headmaster at Foxcroft Academy, said he’s concerned that scoring will be so time-consuming that teachers will end up having to forgo some of their professional development and contact with students. Robert Shafto, executive director of the Center for Educational Services in Auburn, wonders how school systems can ensure consistency in scoring.

“Is a ‘meets the standard’ in Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln going to be equivalent to what people in Lewiston High School say meets the standard?” asked Shafto, whose independent, nonprofit organization works to improve student learning and teacher communication.

Pam Rolfe, local assessment coordinator with the Maine Department of Education, said the time required to score the tests has been “an ongoing issue” among schools. The department plans to issue further guidance on scoring this spring, she said.

Noting that the majority of 11th-graders either didn’t meet or only partially met the math standards on the state’s standardized test – the Maine Educational Assessment – in 2002-2003, Shafto questioned whether students would fare any better on the local assessments. Both the MEA and the local assessments are intended to be aligned with the Maine Learning Results.

But Rolfe didn’t see much of a problem. Students will have multiple opportunities through various types of assessments over four years to demonstrate that they understand the standards for grades nine through 12, she said.

“Our hope is that students will do well when the decision about whether or not they have met the standard in math is based on the results from across a collection of assessments,” she said.

Low performance on the local assessments may mean more instruction and an opportunity to replace that assessment, she pointed out. “It seems to me we’ve built in support for more students to do well on these standards,” she said.

Comparisons between the MEA and local assessments aren’t necessarily apt, she said, because the local assessments measure types of performance that wouldn’t be measured on the state test.

But “broad discrepancies” between the state’s standard assessment and local assessments should trigger questions by teachers, she said.

The Learning Results may have a series of unintended consequences, Shafto said. There could be more students who see the writing on the wall and decide to drop out, a lowering of criteria for meeting the standards, or a flurry of retirements of teachers and administrators who feel burned out and overwhelmed.

On the other hand, there’s the promise of a real payoff when heretofore uninterested and disengaged students understand that school is no longer about “goofing off and getting by, and begin doing the work they need to do,” Shafto said.

“This is a great experiment we’re in the midst of,” he said.