Stalemate broken on school tests

From the Inquirer.

Stalemate broken on school tests
By Dan Hardy
Inquirer Staff Writer

A Pennsylvania stalemate over adopting mandatory high school tests as a graduation requirement was broken yesterday when state education officials backed down and agreed to voluntary tests.

To graduate under current regulations, students must pass the PSSAs or, if they fail, they must pass an assessment given by their local districts. Those include standardized local tests, passing core courses, or showing proficiency from an examination of students' course work.

Last year, state education officials proposed a set of mandatory state subject tests that students who failed the PSSAs could take and had proposed limiting the use of local assessments to standardized tests. School boards and teachers' unions blocked that plan; yesterday's proposal was an effort to break the logjam.

Under the new plan, a third option would be added: a battery of new state tests to be developed in various subject areas, including English, math, sciences, and social studies. Passing those tests would show that a student had met the standards in that area. Good scores on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests would also meet the graduation requirement.

The plan is to be formally proposed by the state Board of Education this summer. If it goes through the regulatory process intact, it will apply to seniors graduating in June 2015.

Students who failed the state tests, which would be called "Keystone Exams," would get remedial help and retake them; the state is developing a model curriculum and diagnostic tools to help teachers find out what material students don't understand.

Also, the proposal said that school district assessments must be examined by an independent organization to confirm that they meet state academic standards. The state and local districts would share the cost of making sure the local assessments meet state benchmarks. Special education students can graduate if they meet the requirements of their individualized education plans.

A study released last week said that only a handful of Pennsylvania's school districts could show that their local reading and math assessments met state standards and were being used in a way that ensured that all high school graduates had mastered all required material. In 2007, about 56,000 11th-grade students who had failed at least one PSSA test the year before graduated after passing passed a local assessment.

At a news conference, the new plan was announced yesterday by Thomas Gentzel, the executive director of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association; Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak and Board of Education Chairman Joseph Torsella. The association had opposed mandatory testing. Gentzel said he supports the the new plan because the state tests are voluntary and the local assessments can still be used.

"We believe this new language recognizes the need to ensure that all students in the commonwealth graduate from high school with essential skills, yet balances that with the need to provide local school boards with significant and meaningful flexibility in achieving that goal," he said in a statement.

Zahorchak said the proposal would ensure that for students taking a course "across the hall or across the state," the subject matter would be equally rigorous.

Eventually, the state would like to see the Keystone Exams replace the 11th-grade PSSA - the state's No Child Left Behind Accountability tests, Zahorchak said.

In January 2008, the state Board of Education proposed that all districts must use state subject tests. That plan was met with a storm of opposition from the school boards association, teachers' unions and education-reform groups. In July, the state legislature placed a one-year hold on the proposal.

This year, Sen. Jane Orie (R, Allegheny) introduced a bill that would block the Board of Education from imposing any new state graduation requirement without legislative approval. In a statement yesterday, Orie said the new proposal did not change her mind. "The truth is, we already know what schools are struggling and what students are failing," she said.

State Sen. Andrew E. Dinniman (D., Chester), was even more emphatic in his opposition. The 10 new proposed state tests and the process of making sure local tests meet state standards would cost "tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars," he said, adding, "We have struggling taxpayers, not just struggling students - how would he [Zahorchak] pay those bills?"

Education Department spokesman Michael Race said that the tests would cost about $30 million to develop and that the state is asking for $9.8 million to develop them this year. No cost estimate of the expense for validating the local tests has been arrived at.

State Rep. James R. Roebuck Jr. (D., Phila.), the chairman of the House Education Committee, was more positive. "I think this is a substantial step forward - this begins to move them into the necessary dialogue that will ultimately resolve much of the opposition," he said.

But James Testerman the president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, while saying that the union had not made a final decision about the new proposal, said: "On the surface, it looks like they are still trying to put in place a series of high-stakes exit exams for high school, and we're opposed to that."