Standardized tests taking toll on Mississippi schools

Mississippi schools spend up to one of every four days of the year giving their students standardized tests.

The Mississippi Association of State Superintendents put the range of testing between 38 and 45 days of the 180-day school year.

“Then you have to add the time that teachers spend on reviewing prior to the test and then reviewing after the test,” said Executive Director Sam Bounds.

Ronnie McGehee, superintendent for the Madison County School District, said the total number of test days is “an incredible oppressive amount. As my grandmother would say, ‘we’re spending way too much time weighing the calf, instead of feeding the calf.’ ”

Lisa Karmacharya, executive director of the Mississippi Association of School Administrators, said the statewide testing calendar is five pages long.

Superintendents, administrators and teachers are all expressing increased frustration with the numbers of tests given to students, she said.

“It’s like a runaway train,” she said. “It really is out of control at this point.”

Something needs to be done, she said. “We’ve got to do what is best for the children.”

The No Child Left Behind Act requires states to test all students in grades 3 through 8 in English, language arts and math. In high school, students must take Algebra I and English II tests.

State Superintendent Carey Wright said the state requires only about three days of standardized testing for each grade but that local districts can add their own testing beyond that.

School superintendents need to examine how much they are testing to determine how much time is being consumed, she said. “That really is a local decision. I trust superintendents.”

This year, new kindergarten students in Mississippi took a readiness assessment, and the results are alarming, with two of every three children lacking the skills to be ready for kindergarten, she said.

“Some children could not identify any letters or any numbers,” she said. “They couldn’t differentiate letters from numbers.”

This is why she believes pre-K education is so critical.

For the first time this year, Mississippi third-graders will be tested to determine if they can read at the third-grade level, a program known as “third-grade gate.”

Third-graders who fail are given two more chances to pass. Those that can’t pass will remain in third grade.

Wright anticipates more testing of first- and second-graders to monitor the progress of students as they near the third-grade gate test.

Cedrick Gray, superintendent for Jackson Public Schools, said he is concerned that “third-graders are being over-tested.”

In March, April and May, “they’re taking a high stakes test every month,” he said.

Mississippi educators are far from alone in concerns about over-testing.

Officials in Florida and Ohio have talked of reducing hours spent on standardized tests.

Denise Krause, whose son attends third grade at McWillie Elementary School, worries about all the time spent testing.

“They test, and they test, and they test,” she said. “I don’t know when they have time to teach. We’ve lost some good teachers because of this.”

Jackson teacher Joyce Moxley left McWillie and started the Montessori Academy in the capital city.

“Testing has its place, but we should have quality instruction and then an appropriate test score would follow,” she said.

She wonders if testing children so early and so often winds up destroying their joy of learning.

Reading starts being something they do for tests and stops being something they do for pleasure, she said.

The Mississippi Association of State Superintendents is pushing for the adoption of the ACT Aspire test, rather than the PARCC, to give to students in grades 3-8.

One reason is that each PARCC test next year must be taken on a computer, Bounds said.

Some Mississippi schools don’t have enough computers or enough bandwidth for hundreds of students to take the tests at the same time, he said. “It’s problematic.”

With the ACT Aspire test, students can use pencil and paper, he said.

Walt Drane, interim assessment director for the state Department of Education, responded that bandwidth shouldn’t be a problem.

PARCC is being used this year under a one-year emergency contract, and the department is now seeking proposals for an assessment to be used in the future.

McGehee said the jury is still out on the Aspire test, but that he is all for replacing PARCC. Some teachers with doctorates in math have told him some PARCC questions took them awhile to figure out.

He questioned whether such tests are helping students. “Why are we creating a system that students can’t succeed in?” he asked.

Three years ago, the Madison district started using prep tests for the ACT as early as seventh grade to determine where students are strong and where they need the most help.

As a result of that focus, students at Velma Jackson High School in Camden, where more than 60 percent of residents live below poverty, have seen their average ACT score rise from 14.5 to 16.5.

McGehee shared the story of one male student who never dreamed of college and scored a 20 — high enough to win a full scholarship to a community college.

This huge student, he said, “starts crying.”

The way to improve these scores is to focus on reading, writing and improving vocabulary, he said. “Reading is the gateway to learning. If we can get better at reading, we can get better at taking tests.”

Testing should be about improving pupil performance, he said. “It should not be about being oppressive.”

Contact Jerry Mitchell at jmitchell@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7064. Follow @jmitchellnews on Twitter.

Reading section from 8th grade English test:

“To demarcate the test area, from each of the two central trees was strung a single, flagged green rope = 1.5 m above the ground and reaching back 10 m behind the net to the release point. During testing and control trials, a third flagged rope was strung down the center of the test area, dividing it into two equally wide lanes (3.5 m); thus, each elephant was released into a single lane and had access only to a single rope end. These two lanes are similar to the separation between objects in some previous studies (6), but not in others, in which subjects were allowed to move around (e.g., refs. 5, 7 and 11).”