Some school districts still waiting for end-of-year assessments

Editor's Note: The following story has been clarified below.

Missouri school officials still are waiting for end-of-the-year assessment results, despite a promise from a testing vendor of a 10-day return.

The failure to provide scores in a timely manner for the Missouri Assessment Program test is another gaffe in a long string of issues over the new test but likely the last, as a funding ban by the Missouri Legislature takes the testing consortium, called Smarter Balanced, out of the equation. McGraw Hill is acting as the state's vendor for Smarter Balanced.

State elected officials appropriated $5.7 billion for education last week that sets aside $7 million to develop new assessment testing and a caveat prohibiting the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from paying Smarter Balanced $4.2 million for the 2016 tests.

Amy James, Dexter Schools' director of special education, said she still has not received the bulk of the district's 2015 test results.

"On June 15, Grade Level Assessment Reports for grade 4 math were released and made available to districts," she said Thursday. "Reports for other grade levels and content areas have not been made available at this time."

State elected officials appropriated $5.7 billion for education last week that includes $7 million for new assessment testing and a caveat prohibiting the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) from paying Smarter Balanced $4.2 million for the 2016 tests.

The prohibition on paying Smarter Balanced comes in the wake of a Feb. 24 ruling by Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green that the state's partnership with the Common Core testing company is an "illegal interstate compact not authorized by the U.S. Congress."

"If a new test is not created within the next nine months, the district will go with an already established test from a different vendor," James said. "At this time, that test has not been decided upon."

"I just feel like the district spent a lot of time and energy catching up, and now we are in a state of chance again," said Patty Robertson, R-I assistant superintendent of curriculum of the Poplar Bluff School District.

Despite years of litigation, legislation and threats to funding, kicking Smarter Balanced to the curb will do little to eliminate Common Core, which is locked into the Missouri Learning Standards, from the classroom.

"For right now, we have to teach the standards that we have. And the standards that we use have some Common Core items. The districts have always had the flexibility and authority to add and remove standards," Robertson said. "We are not locked into the state standards. They provide us a guide, and they give us an assessment. We work the curriculum to match that. We can teach whatever we want; there is still a lot of local control."

The Smarter Balanced test received mixed remarks from Missouri teachers. According to a Missouri State Teachers Association survey in May, 52 percent of teachers said preparing children for the test took up more time than other tests.

Missouri and other states also reported a number of computer glitches, although Robertson said the testing in Poplar Bluff went without a hitch.

"The Smarter Balanced Grade Level Assessment ran relatively smoothly for the district," James said. "A few minor isolated incidents occurred, but we were able to work through them quickly and proceed with testing."

Assessment testing is used to indicate performance and affects accreditation. The most recent test, however, will be exempt because of the newness of the content.

"(DESE) told us pretty early on that they would not lower our designation. Some people said it doesn't count. Well, it does kind of count as a rolling average, but it doesn't as far as saying we are not accredited," Robertson said.

The Common Core is a set of academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy, according to corestandards.org. These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. The standards are linked to No Child Left Behind, which required all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

"We were in No Child Left Behind, and the sanctions were pretty steep at that point. At the end, when we were getting close to that 100 percent proficiency target, schools at the end not able to meet that were going into all kinds of corrective action.

"So, as a measure, the federal government offered a waiver process for states to apply and get out of the sanctions. The waiver process included that you had to accept the Common Core standards," Robertson said.

Noreen Hyslop of the Daily Statesman contributed to this story.