Area Students Face New State Exams Grades 4, 7, 10 Will Spend Part Of Next Three Weeks On Tests

Most Spokane area students in grades 4, 7 and 10 will spend part of the next three weeks taking the state’s tough new assessments.

This spring marks the first time almost all students in those grades will face the tests, although 10thgraders are taking a pilot version.

Educators are still “testing the test” at the high school level, so 10th-grade students won’t receive scores.

But fourth- and seventh-grade students will get scores early next fall.

Last year, when fourth-graders were the only ones to receive scores, about half failed. Only 22 percent exceeded the standards in math.

The tests, which are early steps of a long-range plan to reform education, are vastly different than the assessments students are used to taking.

Tests aren’t timed but take an estimated six or seven hours. They’re completed in segments over a period of at least two days.

There’s much more writing involved. Students will answer multiple choice questions, but they’ll also be asked for longer written responses. In math sections, they’ll be asked to explain how they arrived at their answers.

“Students are expected to think more deeply,” said Fran Mester, curriculum director at Spokane School District 81. “There’s more application of skills.”

Students in the Nine Mile Falls District have had practice runs with sample problems, said test coordinator Marc Bell. “We wanted to be sure we were testing their knowledge, not just shocking them with a new approach.”

In Spokane, educators have been reassuring parents who worry about the impact lousy scores might have on their children.

So far, Mester said, there are no plans to use scores to penalize children or hold them back a grade level. District 81 has a new policy that will result in more children being held back next year, but the state assessments probably won’t be used to make those decisions.

Teachers, however, will use the scores to identify areas where students need more help, Mester said.

This year, 10th-graders are merely guinea pigs for testmakers.

“They’ll go through and say, ‘This question’s a good one…the kids seem confused about this one,”’ Mester said.

But eventually, the 10th-grade tests will have extremely high stakes. When this year’s fourth-graders are sophomores, they’ll be the first required to pass the assessments in order to earn a certificate of mastery.

And the certificate of mastery, another product of school reform, will be required to graduate when they’re seniors.

Districts weren’t required to administer the 10th grade pilot this year, but about 90 percent are participating, said Gordon Ensign, assessment director for the state Commission on Student Learning, which created the new tests.

Districts can give the tests between now and May 8.