Reading and math assessments crucial

The COVID-19 pandemic nearly brought American education to a standstill. The projected loss of student learning in reading and math is huge and understandable. While virtual attempts at teaching and learning are to be lauded, it is difficult to predict the impact.

Helping students become proficient in reading and math is a teacher’s goal, preparing them for state tests is not. Yet, learning cannot be decoupled from assessments, which provide critical gauges of a student’s learning. When these results are based on a common measure across a grade, they are the basis for discerning growth and needed interventions.

New York has the reading and math assessments necessary to provide a baseline for teacher diagnosis of the status and needs of each student.

The tests are standards-based, providing results that show a student’s performance for each tested item and its related standard. The assessments are computer-based and untimed. With the possibility of virtual or hybrid instruction continuing, tests may be done with minimal interference to learning with a quick turn-around of results.

For teachers, the emotional and social needs of their students is paramount. However, right next to that is information and data to establish a student’s learning status. Teachers and parents must learn where their students are in reading and math to help them achieve grade expectations.

Schools should not have to worry about test results being used as a teacher evaluation. This is the time for the state Department of Education and school districts to make plans for administering these assessments. The loss of student performance data for another year will only make the challenge for improvement worse. Bruce H. Crowder, ed.d. Delmar