Year After Refusals, New Common Core Tests Begins

New York’s education commissioner says the state has made major changes to the Common Core English and math assessment tests since last year when 1 in 5 students refused to take them.

With this year’s testing getting underway on Tuesday, it remains to be seen whether the differences have changed any minds.

“I don’t want you to think it’s all done, it’s not,” Commissioner MaryEllen Elia told a group of teachers in the western New York district of Lancaster, one of several she visited last week to detail the reforms. “But I also don’t want you to think we haven’t done anything and I didn’t listen because I did and we’ve made significant changes.”

New York last year saw the highest rate of opt-outs in the country as parents protested the volume of testing required under federal law and the high-stakes consequences on teachers, students and schools. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing counted more than 640,000 opt-outs in more than a dozen states, including about 240,000 in New York.

Supporters of the state’s opt-out movement were anticipating large numbers of test refusals again this year, saying the changes have not gone far enough to address their concerns.

“When you say it takes time, they don’t have the time,” parent Heidi Indelicato told Elia during a forum in Lancaster, where 46 percent of students opted out of testing last spring.

Among the biggest shifts this year, Elia said, is that student test scores will not count against teachers in their annual performance reviews as they have in the past. The policy-making Board of Regents has implemented a four-year moratorium while the state rewrites the Common Core learning standards.

The state also has shortened both the English assessments being given over three days this week and the math assessments students will take April 13-15. At least one reading passage and math word problem have been removed, Elia said, adding that every question has been reviewed by 22 teachers.

Additionally, time limits will be relaxed for students who are “productively working,” Elia said, and the results will come back more quickly in a report that’s intended to be easier to understand. Test vendor Pearson has been replaced by Questar, which will develop new test questions for next year with more teacher input.

“Some people, when they get the information, may change their mind. Some people may not,” said Elia, who took over the Education Department in July.

This article appeared in print on page 5 of the April 5th, 2016 edition of Hamodia.