Superintendents from 16 school districts in Benton, Madison and Washington counties oppose a bill to delay a new series of annual tests aligned with the Common Core standards.
Schools across the state are preparing to administer the new Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. The first portion of testing is set to begin in less than a month with most students expected to test on computers rather than by paper and pencil as they have in the past.
The exams will test students in math and literacy. The first portion is scheduled for March 9 through April 10. The second half of testing is planned for April 27 through May 22.
"Teachers, administrators, staff, students and parents across the state have worked hard for the last four years to prepare students to take the PARCC this spring," the superintendents say in their joint statement. "To change at this point will be a critical setback to the education of the children in our state."
House Bill 1241, sponsored by Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, instructs the State Board of Education, state Department of Education and school districts to drop the exams until at least the 2017-18 school year.
The bill also directs the public education system to return to the Benchmark and end-of-course testing program in place for the 2012-13 school year, but Lowery said that part of the bill needs to be amended.
"That's not possible," he said. "The content and instruction that's been going on would not align with the Benchmark test."
Benchmark and end-of-course tests in place through last school year were based on former academic standards outlined in the Arkansas Curriculum Frameworks. Schools began implementing a different set of academic standards, the Common Core State Standards, for literacy and math in the 2011-12 school year. The Partnership for Assessment exams have been designed to align with the Common Core standards.
Charles Cudney, director of the Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative, said the statement from the superintendents was sent to all state senators and representatives representing Benton, Madison and Washington counties and to members of the Senate and House education committees.
"Educators in Arkansas want an assessment that accurately assesses the Common Core skills we are teaching students," Cudney said. "No assessment is perfect. From what we have seen, the PARCC is the best assessment that is available currently to assess the standards that Common Core provides."
Lowery said he thinks the state should continue to have a statewide testing system to provide for annual comparisons of student achievement, but dwindling participation nationally in the partnership exams will no longer allow for meaningful comparisons among states. He anticipates the new exams would be discontinued after this school year, because of political opposition, making the results useless for tracking the schools' progress over time.
Partnership for Assessment at one time was a consortium of more than 20 states, including states committed to giving the exam and some that weren't committed, partnership spokesman David Connerty-Marin said. This spring, 11 states plus the District of Columbia are scheduled to give the exam to 5 million students.
Lowery is working with the Arkansas Department of Education on other options for this school year. He hopes to finalize amendments to the bill in time for the House Education Committee to discuss it next week.
The proposal to revert to the Benchmark concerned the superintendents, Cudney said.
"To make that decision within a matter of days or weeks of getting ready to take the exam would be disruptive in a major way," he said.
The superintendents' statement also discusses the money the state owes the Partnership Assessment, with $9 million committed, of which $4.1 million has been paid, Cudney said. The cost to purchase the 2012-13 Benchmark assessment would be $5.8 million.
Springdale Superintendent Jim Rollins said the announcement of a governor's task force on Wednesday is a common sense approach for reviewing the Common Core state standards and the partnership test and provides an opportunity to find common ground.
Rollins doesn't think continuing to try to find a way to make House Bill 1241 work is in the best interest of students given the short amount of time that exists before testing starts.
"We've been focused on the learning standards on this PARCC assessment now for a number of years," Rollins said. "Let's live through this process. Let's see how this works."
Schools, teachers, students, parents and policymakers will lose a chance to find out how well students are doing under the Common Core if the partnership exams aren't given this school year, said Sarah McKenzie, executive director of the Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas. The office on Wednesday posted a blog with concerns about House Bill 1241.
McKenzie said she hopes policymakers will seek an option allowing Arkansas to be compared to other states that measures student growth over time.
The U.S. Department of Education requires the state to test students in literacy and math in grades three through eight and once in high school, as well as in science, which the state administers in the fifth and seventh grades and in biology, Arkansas Department of Education spokesman Kimberly Friedman said. The state would face a penalty for noncompliance, though the penalty is unknown.
Brenda Bernet can be reached by email at bbernet@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWABrenda.
NW News on 02/12/2015