Both the state school board and Senate Education Committee chair Peggy Lehner have heard the complaints about the new state tests – very loudly and very clearly.
Now they want to know whether problems with the tests are widespread or whether they are isolated incidents.
Lehner joined the board this week for updates on how testing has progressed across the state since it started Feb. 16. Though the Ohio Department of Education had some promising news – about 900,000 of the new online exams have been completed already – discussion focused on what has gone wrong and how to respond to increasing opposition to the tests.
Board member Mary Rose Oakar of Cleveland said she has receiving “boxes of test mania letters from thoughtful parents and teachers,” so she is trying to decide how best to handle the situation.
Board member Bob Hagan told the board: “I’ve never seen so much frustration from teachers and parents who are so outraged.”
Hagan proposed that the state board pass a resolution against the tests and in opposition to the state’s Common Core testing partner, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
Board members agreed with his concerns, with several sharing issues from their districts, but Hagan’s proposal gained little traction. Board members and Lehner instead said they want to know more about the extent of testing issues before making any decision.
Lehner said she and her staff are hearing constant complaints, both in calls and emails, and in testimony to her committee this week from teachers.
But she wants to know if anyone is collecting data on how many issues occur and whether they are serious or minor. If no one else is, she said, the committee she just formed to review state testing issues will survey districts.
State board member Stephanie Dodd of Hebron also said schools in her area are reporting technological issues. She asked ODE for more details next month on how widespread and serious those are.
And board member C. Todd Jones of New Albany said he wants to be sure that people aren’t just becoming anxious by anticipating problems that never occur. He said the “Y2K” scare as 1999 became 2000 turned out to be not much of an issue – partly because it was overstated, partly because problems were fixed.
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