The state has given 16 Arkansas school districts and charter school systems -- including the Little Rock, Bentonville, Pine Bluff and Texarkana districts -- waivers from giving online, state-required tests in math and literacy this school year.
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Instead, students in one or more of the schools in those exempted districts will take paper versions of the new Partnership for Assessment of College and Career Readiness tests when students take those exams in spring 2015.
The new exams, developed by a consortium of about a dozen states based on a set of common math and English-language arts/literacy standards, have been advertised as online tests since the inception of the consortium in 2010. The Arkansas Department of Education and the school districts have been working for almost that long to prepare for the computerized tests for grades three through 11. The tests are replacing the state's old Benchmark and End-of-Course exams.
Debbie Jones, the Arkansas Department of Education's assistant commissioner for learning services, said last week that some districts do not yet have the capability to test their students online, so the agency made a hardship waiver available.
"We have 94% of the school districts that did not submit a request for waiver," Jones said in an email Friday. "So we are still pleased with the progress of the state."
Jones said in an interview that even though the tests won't be given until next spring, it was necessary for school districts to apply and receive waivers now so adequate numbers of paper tests can be prepared for the test-takers in the exempted districts.
The districts seeking waivers had to describe how they will be prepared for online testing in 2015-16, Jones said. Some of the districts are reconfiguring their technology systems, she said. Others are purchasing more devices or installing fiber-optic lines to improve their internet connections.
Besides the Little Rock, Bentonville, Pine Bluff and Texarkana districts, the waiver recipients include the Lighthouse Academies of Pine Bluff and the Lighthouse Academies of Arkansas, which has schools in Jacksonville.
Other districts receiving waivers for one or more of their schools are Blevins, Camden-Fairview, Cedarville, Hermitage, Hughes, Jasper, Lee County, Norfork, Ouachita and Ozark Mountain.
The Bentonville School District was exempted for 11th-grade online testing. The need for an exemption was made necessary by the construction of a new high school, which will require the purchase of new technology systems, according to information provided by the Arkansas Department of Education.
The Little Rock district, the state's largest school system with more than 25,000 students, received an exemption from online testing at all of its nearly 50 campuses.
In its application signed by Superintendent Dexter Suggs and Deputy Superintendent Marvin Burton, the district stated that it does not have a sufficient number of computers to test all the students who are supposed to take the tests in this school year.
"Student enrollment in the Little Rock School District is such that schools at all levels fall short of the necessary number of devices to adequately assess each eligible student," the Little Rock application states. "After reassessing each school building for device capacity .... we conclude it is impossible to assess general and special needs students, as well as provide make-up opportunities ... with our current number of devices in the window and time frame allowed."
Danyell Cummings, the district's director of testing and evaluation, said in an interview Friday that all district schools have computers, but not every school has enough computers to handle the testing demand.
"We wanted to give every student access to a computer and the opportunity do his or her best on the assessment," she said.
The district participated in the online field test this past school year. And more recently, district leaders made use of a planning tool provided by the Partnership for Assessment to calculate how many computers it would take to test the district's students within the 20 days allotted for giving the tests.
"After running those numbers, we were not confident that we could complete the test for all students across the board in the time that the state allowed," Cummings said. "If the time frame changed -- if we had more than 20 days to give the assessment -- we could possibly do it."
"Twenty days sounds like a lot," she said. "Anybody would say 'Oh, 20 days, you should be able to do it. But what we experienced with field testing -- which was a positive because we could get firsthand information on what could possibly happen during the actual test -- we had issues with some students being kicked out of the system during the assessment. We had computers slowing down, probably because of the vast number of students on the computers at the same time, trying to take the assessment."
Cummings said the district has tried to increase the bandwidth and take other steps to better prepare for the online exams to be given this school year.
"We simply can't take that type of chance if we are limited to a certain number of days to get it all done," she said.
Cummings offered Central High School as an example of the challenges the district faces. The school has 285 computers that can be used for testing. It has 615 ninth-graders, 748 10th-graders and 650 11th-graders, all of whom must take tests in both math and in English-language arts/literacy within the specified time period.
The Partnership for Assessment planning tool proposed a ratio of 3 to 5 test-takers per computer, she said.
"Our students are going to work hard this year. Our teachers are going to work hard this year. We wanted to give them a fighting chance on this new assessment," she said.
She also said that the district will continue to prepare students and equipment for the online tests in subsequent years. That will include having students taking practice tests on the computers and purchasing more desktop computers.
"We were all ready for online assessments," Cummings said. "We want to be part of it. We need a little more preparation, a little more time. It's a little disappointing that we aren't going to do the online testing. That's where my mind was."
The Little Rock district cited only insufficient numbers of computers as its reason for seeking a waiver.
The Pine Bluff School District cited lack of computers, insufficient bandwidth and insufficient internal infrastructure.
The Pine Bluff district said it will take several steps over the next year to address the technology deficiencies, including the purchase of additional laptops with the assistance of a business partner. Also planned is the purchase of more bandwidth to be distributed to schools through fiber-optic wires. The district has also entered into a contract with a company to assist the district's technology department in upgrading the infrastructure.
The Texarkana district said in its waiver application that is is updating its infrastructure to support more devices and to provide districtwide wireless connectivity. The district is using magnet school grant funds to increase the number of student computers.
Metro on 08/17/2014