JAMESTOWN – It’s time once again for students across New York State to show what they know, and that includes students here in Jamestown and the rest of Chautauqua County.
Standardized testing begins this week for students in grades 3 through 8, who will be taking ELA (English Language Arts), starting on Tuesday. The math exams begin next week.
The tests are given in order to assess how each school district has applied the Common Core teaching standards to their curriculum. Since first being given, they’ve been a sore subject for parents and teachers across the state. Parents feel the additional tests add unneeded stress to their child’s live, while teachers feel the tests are unfair because they often involve testing parts of curriculum that teachers themselves have yet to implement in their teaching. The tests were also initially going to be used to help measure teacher performance, although that has since been removed as evaluation criteria by the state education department.
Jamestown School Superintendent Tim Mains told WRFA last week that the state education department has also responded to concerns brought forward by parents.
“There’s a new vendor that’s managing the process and even though that new vendor is so new that they have to use old questions that were field tested by the previous company, they took those questions and put them in front of teachers,” Mains explained. “So they had teachers who read every single item, threw out things that they felt weren’t grade appropriate or that they didn’t think were fair. They shortened the test a bit. And the biggest piece, which I personally love, is that they no longer will have a time limit.”
Mains adds that by removing the time limit on the exams, there should be less stress for students since they know they won’t have to rush through the exam.
Jamestown Public Schools Superintendent Tim Mains
It remains to be seen if parents in the county will be satisfied with the changes, or if they will instead try to opt their students out of the exam. In 2015, Jamestown Public Schools reported an opt-out rate of 2 percent for the ELA exam, and a 3 percent opt-out rate for the math exam. The school district with the highest percentage of opt-outs in Chautauqua County was Fredonia School district with a 53 percent math assessment refusal rate and a 50 percent refusal rate for the ELA exams.
Mains said he’s hopeful that Jamestown will have a high participation rate because it’s crucial that the district knows how will it is doing in teaching the common core curriculum.
“I know that there are some folks who take objection to the common core, but the higher standards are exactly where we need to be, exactly where we need to be headed, and I want our children to perform well and be able to meet those standards,” he said. “If they’re not meeting those standards then we want to know, and we can’t know if they are not taking those tests.”
Mains said a newsletter recently went out to parents reminding them the tests are taking place this week, and also asking parents to make sure their children are prepared by getting rest, eating a breakfast that is low in sugar and high in protein, and to also reassure their children.
“Parents need to remind their children that the tests are not about them,” Mains said. “It’s not to say how smart they are, it’s simply to say how much can you do and show as much to do as you can. If you don’t know a question, then make your best guess or go onto a question that you can answer.”
In all, there will be three days of English tests this week and three days of math tests next week.
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