SAD 53 under pressure to meet state standards

PITTSFIELD – A child’s report card in SAD 53 will look markedly different as Maine’s Local Assessment System is implemented, school board members learned Monday night. It also may take students more than 12 years to finish their public education and colleges will have to get on board with a system that uses one through four for grading, rather than the old A’s, B’s and C’s.

Even textbooks may fall by the wayside, replaced by Internet research and cooperative classroom learning.

Board members spent more than two hours Monday learning the intricacies of the LAS, which could mean up to 144 tests for each student in a four-year span, covering six content areas.

“We’re worried,” admitted Faye Anderson, primary grades principal. “There will not be one month that students aren’t taking at least five assessments. Some assessments are four pages long and each one is different.”

Maine’s mandated LAS is intended to document each student’s performance while enhancing learning, explained SAD 53 curriculum director Barbara Mousseau. Each grade span – prekindergarten through fourth grade, fifth through eighth grades, and ninth through 12th grades – must have the system fully implemented this year.

“Although the system is cumbersome and labor intensive, it does give us a better picture of where each student is,” said Mousseau.

Each student must demonstrate accomplishment on each assessment or it must be repeated. Because some students may have difficulty accomplishing this, schools will be allowed to educate students up to the age of 25. Current law is age 20.

“Our teachers are already looking at what assessments will be required in October and are preparing their lesson plans accordingly,” said Anderson. “Assessment will drive instruction. Are they going to learn less? No. Are they going to learn differently? Yes.”

Middle school principal Arnold Shorey explained that since SAD 53’s curriculum is already aligned with Maine’s Learning Results, the district has a lot of the resources it will need.

Key to the students’ individual success, explained Mousseau, will be parental involvement. The school’s curriculum will be posted on a Web site and the expectations of learning can be tracked by parents. In addition, each assessment will be an indicator of subject mastery.

For those students who need extra help, summer school and after-school programs will be required. It is unclear, said the administrators, where the funding for these programs will come from.

“With all this testing, what is left for classroom time?” asked Director Robert Downs.

“No one has the answer to where the time comes from,” answered Shorey. “It’s our number one worry.”

“It is overwhelming at times,” admitted Anderson.

Jim Horner, dean of academics at Maine Central Institute, said the LAS raises a number of questions at the secondary level, including whether colleges will accept the new grading system. “Our freshman class is the first class that will be held to the new standards,” he said. “We are going to have to restructure our requirements for graduation. It presents a huge nightmare as we see how we can integrate this all into our curriculum.”