The End of an Era

Over at Bluff City Ed, Jon Alfuth celebrates the end of the EOC testing era. Those tests will be replaced with TNReady next year.

Alfuth notes that there are many challenges with the current testing regime, including gaming the system and misalignment with current standards.

Here’s what he says he hopes the new tests provide:

First, I’d personally like to see aligned pre- and formative assessments to allow teachers to track tests throughout the year. These could be given to the districts and used to develop a benchmark for where students are starting and track their progress throughout the year. These should be designed by Measurement Inc. to ensure close alignment to the actual test.

Second, we need to see shorter tests. Asking students to sit for between 2 to 4 three hour assessments in a four day period is a lot, and it does stress kids out. I’d like to see the number of questions reduced on the new TNReady assessments to reflect this reality.

Third, we need better special education and special needs accommodations. I’m not a special education teacher myself, but from talking to some of my colleagues my understanding is that the accommodations for the EOC regime aren’t the greatest. Hopefully a technologically advanced test like TNReady (it can be given on paper or on a computer) could include better accommodations for kids with special needs. I also hope it makes automatic adjustments for students who, say, speak English as a second language.

Fourth, we need to see a substantial increase of resources aligned to the new assessments and SOON. Teachers need time to internalize the format at the types of questions that students will be asked to complete on the new assessments. That was one of the failings of PARCC and one reason I believe we no longer have it in Tennessee – teachers didn’t have enough supporting resources and backed off support for the assessment. Lets hope that TNReady doesn’t make the same mistake.

More on TNReady:

TNReady to Borrow Questions from Utah

Transition to TNReady Creates TVAAS Problems

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