BEYOND TESTING

At a time when standardized tests have gained prominence – and the ire of many educators – because of the federal No Child Left Behind program, students, parents, teachers and others are right to worry about how learning will be measured in Maine. Rather than follow the national model of mandatory testing, the state has worked for nearly a decade with communities to allow them to develop their own means of ensuring that students are learning what is required under Maine’s Learning Results.

This is not an easy process. An early and continuing question is how to ensure that assessments, the means of measuring what students have learned, are equally rigorous across the state. By law, all students must meet the requirement of the Learning Results to graduate from high school. But, what is considered meeting the standards in one school may not be satisfactory in another.

The state Department of Education has developed guidelines for local districts to use in developing their own measurement system. In addition, the department suggests that teachers within schools, districts and perhaps beyond get together to compare their scoring of student performance. This will help ensure that teachers are accurately rating their own students’ work.

However, school districts and teachers should not get bogged down in the idea that local assessments involve lots of testing, and therefore, a lot of time taken away from teaching. Assessments can easily be woven into daily classroom activities. A quiz, a written report, a lab experiment can all count as local assessments. Kindergarten students, for example, can make a map to demonstrate their understanding of geography. Students in grades 5 through 8 can be asked to write a paper encouraging people to vote to demonstrate their understanding of civics and history.

The state requires that three-quarters of assessments about the same subject in a school system be the same. This ensures that students in different classes are meeting the same standard. Eight to 12 assessments in each subject area are required during each four-year grade span covered by the Learning Results.

In addition, the feedback can be instantaneous. If a student or a class clearly does not understand an assignment, the teacher can revise it as necessary. If students clearly understand a concept, the teacher can move on to the next level.

In some ways it would be easier to ask all students in every grade to do the same task – usually take a test – at the same time. This would take time away from classroom instruction and run afoul of Maine’s long tradition of local control of education. So, while developing and calibrating local assessment systems is a lot of work, it is in the interests of school districts to develop their own rigorous, consistent systems.