Tests To Require Student’s Reasoning
The standardized fill-in-the-bubble tests used in state schools for decades may be replaced by a new test that asks students how or why they selected their answers.
The new test will debut in schools around Washington state beginning today in a pilot run that’s part of the state’s move toward education reform.
It’s designed to measure how well students are meeting higher academic standards that are being created by the state Commission on Student Learning and adopted by schools statewide.
More than 60,000 fourth-graders in 251 school districts and about 20 private schools across Washington will participate in the pilot run.
It doesn’t eliminate multiple choice questions altogether, but also asks children to expand on their answers and perform other tasks, said commission spokesman Chris Thompson.
Some sample questions include:
Look at these four digits: 3-1-8-5. Rearrange them so they make the greatest number possible. Then explain what you had to think about to make that number, using words, numbers or pictures.
Pretend you’re an advice columnist, and a reader has written in suggesting a longer school day. Write a letter back saying what you think of the idea, creating both a rough draft and a finished draft of an answer that shows a good concept and design, an interesting style and a good command of spelling, grammar and sentence structure.
The idea is to see not just whether a student gets the right answer, “but how close did they get? We want more than just an up-or-down, black-or-white, you-pass-or-you-fail kind of system,” Thompson said.
The trial run will continue through May 10. The results will not be released but used to refine later versions of the test, so officials can eliminate questions that don’t work or rework ones that need clarification, Thompson said.
All the major school districts in the Puget Sound area are participating, including Seattle, Bellevue, Lake Washington, Kent and Edmonds.
The standardized Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills still will be required annually by the state for fourth-, eighth- and 11th-grade students, although the new test could replace it eventually.