Re: “The myth of too much school testing,” Nov. 18 Alicia Caldwell column.
Alicia Caldwell sneered at high school students who opted out of Colorado Measure of Academic Success (CMAS) exams and at school boards for not preparing the students for the tests. She said that the kids’ reasons for ducking the exams were “nonsense.”
Caldwell cited “cold, hard facts” as her proof. “State-required standardized testing in first through 12th grades takes 1.4 percent of a kid’s annual school time at most.”
The columnist refers to a discounted 2012 Augenblick Palaich and Associates (APA) report on state assessments that formed the basis for Colorado Department of Education (CDE) testimony to the state legislature last session.
The data was so bad that CDE hired APA for a redo. This summer, APA produced its second report for CDE and the HB 1202 Task Force on Standards and Assessments. It turns out that students spend 170 days on testing from first through 12th grades, almost exactly one full school year. Little third- through fifth-graders spend more than two weeks in each grade on state-mandated tests, more than twice as much time as high schoolers. These numbers don’t include regular testing and non-stop standardized test preparation.
The assessments might be acceptable if they produced high academic achievement. But they don’t. The Denver Post reported this summer that achievement test results in Colorado are as flat as our mountains are high.
Standardized testing is expensive. The direct costs of assessments according to APA are from $55 million to $130 million a year. Educators don’t think we’re getting much for the money. Teachers and administrators rated CMAS exams in the APA report at 1.3 to 2 points out of 5 as beneficial measures of instruction and student content mastery.
The Denver Alliance is to let parents and students give their reviews of standardized testing at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/coloradotests.
With all the changes in standards and curriculum and poor planning around implementing Common Core and new standardized tests, students and teachers are caught in the chaos. The state can look forward to seeing this instructional damage unfold for years.
Kristi Butkovich is executive director of the Denver Alliance for Public Education.
