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Nebraska schools preparing for standardized reading test
By Harold Reutter
harold.reutter@theindependent.com
The state of Nebraska is about to enter a brave new world of testing when it comes to assessing student academic performance.
For years, Nebraska was unique among the 50 states with regard to state assessments. Instead of one statewide test for reading and math, the Nebraska Department of Education allowed local school districts the opportunity to develop their own assessments to measure student academic achievement.
Under Nebraska's system, all those local assessments were to have the same amounts of rigor or difficulty. But despite those assurances, most people seemed to agree that allowing school districts to create their own assessments did not allow an "apples to apples" comparison of how students from different school districts were doing in subjects such as reading, math and writing.
That was just fine with former Nebraska Education Commissioner Doug Christensen, who has long preached against the dangers of "high-stakes" testing. He believed that permitting local school districts to develop their own tests or assessments allowed them to measure student achievement.
To Christensen, teacher assessments of how well their students performed as they were trying to learn new material were just as important as the "summative assessment" or final test. That's because teachers could use those so-called "formative assessments" to adjust classroom lesson plans to help their students eventually master the material they were trying to learn.
He was always afraid that a perspective would get lost if Nebraska switched to a system that would allow people to directly compare one school district to another.
That philosophy was never popular with U.S. Department of Education officials. In the wake of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Christensen had to battle to maintain Nebraska's system of locally developed assessments. Federal officials kept threatening to cut off federal education funding to Nebraska unless officials adopted a state test.
But ultimately, it was not federal officials who ended Nebraska's system of letting each school district develop its own tests. It was Nebraska state senators, including the late Ron Raikes, a former chairman of the Legislature's Education Committee who wanted a system that would let people compare one school district to another.
That decision is understandable. Over the years, state aid to local school districts had greatly expanded. The Grand Island Public School District, for example, gets more money in state aid to educate its students than it collects and spends in local property taxes to educate students.
That situation is not shared by all Nebraska school districts. However, it's certainly not unusual, either. As a result, it should not be surprising that state senators want to see if they are getting their money's worth when it comes to state spending on K-12 education. For most senators, the ability to compare school districts helps them know which school districts are spending that money wisely and which are not.
As a result, all Nebraska school districts will administer a single state test on reading to their students this spring.
Deb Harder, GIPS elementary teaching and learning director, said all Nebraska schools must administer the reading test sometime between March 29 and April 30. Students tested will be in grades 3 through 8, as well as grade 11.
Harder and Jane Brown, curriculum coordinator for the Northwest Public Schools, said teachers in their districts already are preparing for the tests. Instead of administering paper-and-pencil tests to students, both school districts will have their students take the tests online.
Brown said students will read several passages before being asked to answer multiple choice questions. In some cases, students will read graphs and charts before being asked to answer multiple-choice questions on that material.
"We've been loading the software on the computers," said Brown, who said students can take both a tutorial and practice tests prior to the actual Nebraska reading test.
Brown said the tutorial is designed to show students how to use the use the computer software. She said students can underline lines so they will not lose their place on the computer screen. Likewise, they also can highlight lines of text on their computer screens.
When it comes to answering multiple-choice questions, students also will be able to "cross out" what they believe are all the wrong answers before marking the one answer they believe is correct. The tutorials also show students how to use the computer to "erase" an answer they come to believe is incorrect, then mark a different answer.
Brown said Northwest will soon have its students going through the tutorials, followed by the practice tests. Students in the Grand Island school district are apparently a little further along. Harder said many students have already taken their computer tutorials, which means they are ready to take practice tests.
Harder said Nebraska law does not put a limit on how many practice tests students can take prior to the actual tests. She said GIPS officials have advised their teachers not to have their students take more than two or three practice tests.
"We don't want to take away too much time from instruction," she said.
Brown and Harder said the Nebraska reading test will measure student ability in two areas: reading comprehension and vocabulary. Those are the only two areas that will be reported on the annual Nebraska State Report Card.
Prior to this year, school districts reported more information about students' abilities in language arts, including speaking and listening, reading fluency, library research and online research, Brown said. Harder said Grand Island also assessed its students in those areas.
Both school districts continue to do assessments in those areas. However, the assessments are for internal use only. Brown said Northwest teachers are probably doing fewer assessments in the area that will not be reported on the Nebraska State Report Card.
Critics of standardized, multiple-choice tests say they tend to narrow the curriculum as teachers and schools begin to concentrate on the content areas that are reported to the general public.
When asked, Brown said that some Nebraska school districts whose students do not perform well on reading comprehension and vocabulary could start spending more time on those content areas and less on skills such as speaking and listening, or reading fluency.
While Nebraska will have a single reading test, Brown said each grade will actually have five versions of the same reading test. However, Harder said all the tests will be the "same" because they should all have the same number of questions rated 1 or "easy," the same number of questions rated 2 or intermediate and the same number of questions rated 3 or "difficult."
Because all students in the same grade will be taking the same test, it theoretically would be possible for the Nebraska Department of Education to rank school districts from the supposed No. 1 district in the state to the supposed "worst" school district when it comes to student reading scores.
However, some people say ranking of school districts is not that informative because of differences in student demographics.
There can be vast differences between districts when it comes to the number of students who are relatively affluent versus the number who live in poverty, the number of kids who are native English speakers versus the number who are English language learners, the number of students who have lived in the same community all their lives versus the number of migrant students, and so on.
The first year
This year is the first year of a statewide reading test. However, 2010 also is the year when Nebraska students will be taking a statewide math test as part of a pilot program.
The pilot is supposed to help develop a math test that will be valid and reliable when it comes to revealing student achievement on math. The math test, like the reading test, will be a multiple-choice exam.
Deb Harder, Grand Island Public Schools elementary teaching and learning director, said the state writing test will stay the same. That test is not multiple choice. Instead, students are given a "prompt" or subject to write about. Their writing then is judged using the Six-Trait Writing Model.
The six traits of good writing include idea and content, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, and finally, convention, which means correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.
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For years, Nebraska was unique among the 50 states with regard to state assessments. Instead of one statewide test for reading and math, the Nebraska Department of Education allowed local school districts the opportunity to develop their own assessments to measure student academic achievement.
Under Nebraska's system, all those local assessments were to have the same amounts of rigor or difficulty. But despite those assurances, most people seemed to agree that allowing school districts to create their own assessments did not allow an "apples to apples" comparison of how students from different school districts were doing in subjects such as reading, math and writing.
To Christensen, teacher assessments of how well their students performed as they were trying to learn new material were just as important as the "summative assessment" or final test. That's because teachers could use those so-called "formative assessments" to adjust classroom lesson plans to help their students eventually master the material they were trying to learn.
He was always afraid that a perspective would get lost if Nebraska switched to a system that would allow people to directly compare one school district to another.
That philosophy was never popular with U.S. Department of Education officials. In the wake of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Christensen had to battle to maintain Nebraska's system of locally developed assessments. Federal officials kept threatening to cut off federal education funding to Nebraska unless officials adopted a state test.
But ultimately, it was not federal officials who ended Nebraska's system of letting each school district develop its own tests. It was Nebraska state senators, including the late Ron Raikes, a former chairman of the Legislature's Education Committee who wanted a system that would let people compare one school district to another.
That decision is understandable. Over the years, state aid to local school districts had greatly expanded. The Grand Island Public School District, for example, gets more money in state aid to educate its students than it collects and spends in local property taxes to educate students.
That situation is not shared by all Nebraska school districts. However, it's certainly not unusual, either. As a result, it should not be surprising that state senators want to see if they are getting their money's worth when it comes to state spending on K-12 education. For most senators, the ability to compare school districts helps them know which school districts are spending that money wisely and which are not.
As a result, all Nebraska school districts will administer a single state test on reading to their students this spring.
Deb Harder, GIPS elementary teaching and learning director, said all Nebraska schools must administer the reading test sometime between March 29 and April 30. Students tested will be in grades 3 through 8, as well as grade 11.
Harder and Jane Brown, curriculum coordinator for the Northwest Public Schools, said teachers in their districts already are preparing for the tests. Instead of administering paper-and-pencil tests to students, both school districts will have their students take the tests online.
Brown said students will read several passages before being asked to answer multiple choice questions. In some cases, students will read graphs and charts before being asked to answer multiple-choice questions on that material.
"We've been loading the software on the computers," said Brown, who said students can take both a tutorial and practice tests prior to the actual Nebraska reading test.
Brown said the tutorial is designed to show students how to use the use the computer software. She said students can underline lines so they will not lose their place on the computer screen. Likewise, they also can highlight lines of text on their computer screens.
When it comes to answering multiple-choice questions, students also will be able to "cross out" what they believe are all the wrong answers before marking the one answer they believe is correct. The tutorials also show students how to use the computer to "erase" an answer they come to believe is incorrect, then mark a different answer.
Brown said Northwest will soon have its students going through the tutorials, followed by the practice tests. Students in the Grand Island school district are apparently a little further along. Harder said many students have already taken their computer tutorials, which means they are ready to take practice tests.
Harder said Nebraska law does not put a limit on how many practice tests students can take prior to the actual tests. She said GIPS officials have advised their teachers not to have their students take more than two or three practice tests.
"We don't want to take away too much time from instruction," she said.
Brown and Harder said the Nebraska reading test will measure student ability in two areas: reading comprehension and vocabulary. Those are the only two areas that will be reported on the annual Nebraska State Report Card.
Prior to this year, school districts reported more information about students' abilities in language arts, including speaking and listening, reading fluency, library research and online research, Brown said. Harder said Grand Island also assessed its students in those areas.
Both school districts continue to do assessments in those areas. However, the assessments are for internal use only. Brown said Northwest teachers are probably doing fewer assessments in the area that will not be reported on the Nebraska State Report Card.
Critics of standardized, multiple-choice tests say they tend to narrow the curriculum as teachers and schools begin to concentrate on the content areas that are reported to the general public.
When asked, Brown said that some Nebraska school districts whose students do not perform well on reading comprehension and vocabulary could start spending more time on those content areas and less on skills such as speaking and listening, or reading fluency.
While Nebraska will have a single reading test, Brown said each grade will actually have five versions of the same reading test. However, Harder said all the tests will be the "same" because they should all have the same number of questions rated 1 or "easy," the same number of questions rated 2 or intermediate and the same number of questions rated 3 or "difficult."
Because all students in the same grade will be taking the same test, it theoretically would be possible for the Nebraska Department of Education to rank school districts from the supposed No. 1 district in the state to the supposed "worst" school district when it comes to student reading scores.
However, some people say ranking of school districts is not that informative because of differences in student demographics.
There can be vast differences between districts when it comes to the number of students who are relatively affluent versus the number who live in poverty, the number of kids who are native English speakers versus the number who are English language learners, the number of students who have lived in the same community all their lives versus the number of migrant students, and so on.
The first year
This year is the first year of a statewide reading test. However, 2010 also is the year when Nebraska students will be taking a statewide math test as part of a pilot program.
The pilot is supposed to help develop a math test that will be valid and reliable when it comes to revealing student achievement on math. The math test, like the reading test, will be a multiple-choice exam.
Deb Harder, Grand Island Public Schools elementary teaching and learning director, said the state writing test will stay the same. That test is not multiple choice. Instead, students are given a "prompt" or subject to write about. Their writing then is judged using the Six-Trait Writing Model.
The six traits of good writing include idea and content, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, and finally, convention, which means correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.
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