A revision of the Everett School District’s assessment plan will eliminate the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) for fifth and eighth graders beginning this year.
The change was presented to the school board in a study session at its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, Oct. 7.
The ITBS is required by the state for third and sixth graders, and its high-school equivalent, the Iowa Test of Educational Development (ITED) is required for ninth graders. But the district has been giving the ITBS to fifth and eighth graders for several years to “fill in the gaps” between annual student progress assessments, said Terry Edwards, executive director of curriculum for the district. The tests cost the district an estimated $50,000 per year. The district’s reasons for dropping the test for those students is WASL success and budget woes.
With the high adequate yearly progress goals recently set by the state through the No Child Left Behind act, a school’s success is now measured primarily by student scores on the WASL test, given annually to fourth, seventh and 10th graders. With the emphasis set on WASL scores, district officials said they are reconsidering whether the other assessments they give are worthwhile.
“We’re going back to our philosophy of why we test and making some changes in how we test,” Edwards said. “If we’re going to spend resources on these tests, they have to help students perform on the WASL.”
Money also was a factor in the decision, Edwards said.
“As budgets become tighter and as we have to do more with less, we need to figure out how we can get a bigger bang for our assessment dollar … ” Edwards said. “We didn’t think we were getting $60,000 of benefits towards success on the WASL.”District officials said that because their main goal in making the change is to improve student learning, they are planning to funnel the $50,000 into more classroom-based assessments, including reading assessments in first, second and third grades and writing assessments in sixth through 12th grade, Edwards said. These assessments would be given and scored within the school so teachers can get immediate feedback on a student’s progress, therefore being able to better address the student’s needs right away. Results of the Iowa Tests often take two to three months to be returned.
“Our underlying goal is helping kids learn better, and out of that we will meet our target for adequate yearly progress,” Edwards said.
The future of assessment tests in Washington state also is scheduled to change. According to Ric Williams, assessment director for the district, the state is planning to drop the ITBS and ITED completely after the 2004-2005 school year. In the 2005-2006 school year, the state hopes to implement the WASL in grades three through eight and 10th grade.
The reasoning, Williams explained, is that the No Child Left Behind act requires states to move away from norm-reference based tests such as the ITBS, which compare students to other students, to standard-based tests like the WASL, which compare students to a performance standard set by the state.
The change will be very beneficial, Williams said.
“This is a much better assessment system because it will allow us to monitor student progress on meeting standards every year, rather than the old model, which only measures student progress at benchmark years,” Williams said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
