Schools Branch Out With Complex Tests

Idaho schoolchildren will face a new battery of tests to rank their knowledge against the nation and the world.

Two-thousand Idaho eighth-graders will take an international math and science exam in March and April. Educators also want to include Idaho’s kids in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national ranking of how children are learning.

Idaho has based its educational progress on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the TAP test, which is administered annually in grades three through 11. The new tests put a greater emphasis on what students can do, not just what they know.

“These are more complex tests,” said Marilyn Howard, state superintendent of public instruction. “They have higher-order performance skills.”

Howard has made no decision on how the tests would affect use of the ITBS and TAP, but she has favored cutting back on both.

The 2,000 students participating in the Third International Math and Science Study will include kids from five Boise junior high schools. Meridian Schools declined to participate because of the amount of time it already spends testing its children.

The test will compare Idaho children with students in nearly 50 countries.

Funding for the test comes from a $150,000 grant from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation.