Teachers union speaks out against state exams
Member: The tests “go against everything we know to be best practices”
As the Board of Regents was meeting inside, a group of teachers union leaders gathered outside the state Education Department building Monday to renew their call for changes to New York’s implementation of English and math tests for students in grades 3-8.
“It’s time that the state Education Department finally took real ownership of this testing debacle,” said Jolene Dibrango, vice president of New York State United Teachers, the state’s major teachers union and a leading critic of the current test system, which is federally mandated but is put in place at the state level.
Dibrango’s remarks came as the Board of Regents was approving the current version of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which includes the testing requirement. It also came a week after the Education Department had to postpone a test day after computer crashes marred the start of the two-day English tests. The math tests are slated to begin later in the month.
Last year’s tests were bedeviled by similar crashes. State officials have blamed the latest snag on Questar Assessment, a vendor that appears to have lacked sufficient computer server memory to handle the influx of online test submissions.
Some 25 percent of the state’s schools offered the online tests, but the problems threw the whole system into turmoil. A number of Capital Region schools offered the online exams, including Guilderland, South Colonie, Saratoga, Niskayuna, Schenectady, Mohonasen, Schodack and Averill Park, according to state records.
Two others, Hoosic Valley and Schuylerville, started online but switched back to paper and pencil after encountering computer problems.
NYSUT had been criticizing the tests prior to the computer snafus. The union believes the scoring cutoffs aren’t realistic and argues that consequently, it’s too easy for students and entire schools to be tagged as deficient.
The union also criticized the lack of time constraints on the tests. Students may take as long as they need to finish. Past criticism had asserted that the tests didn’t offer enough time; but with no limits, the teachers say, students who finish quickly are
forced to sit and stare at their desks for hours as they wait for slower classmates to complete the exams.
Noting that the college admission SATS run more than three hours, Schoharie teachers union president Natalie Mckay said she believes it’s unreasonable to have grade-school kids take that much time or more on an exam. She said some of her students were crying, while others fell asleep during the exams.
“These state tests go against everything we know to be best practices,” added Laura Franz, head of the Albany teachers union, which like Schoharie’s is under the NYSUT umbrella.
Later in the day, state Education Commissioner Maryellen Elia defended the testing concept but stressed she was “disgusted” by the problems with Questar’s performance.
She said the department was continuing to examine its contract with the company, a subsidiary of ETS, which administers the SAT and AP exams.
As to criticism of the tests themselves, Elia noted that they were developed with input from New York teachers and are required by federal law.
“What we’re doing in New York is to try to make those assessments the best they can be,” Elia said.
In addition to union leaders, three Democratic Assembly members attended the rally.
“The Legislature is going to push for change here,” said Angelo Santabarbara, whose district comprises Montgomery County and parts of Albany and Schenectady counties. This session, lawmakers approved a bill that decoupled state test results and teacher evaluations.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the Legislature would or could do regarding the federally required tests.
In other business, the Regents discussed plans to add a language acquisition course as a requirement for certain teaching degrees. It would accommodate the growing number of students for whom English is a second language.