Poor communication over test mars school year start

It should have been a hero moment for the New Mexico Public Education Department. After years of K-3 teachers saying they had to give a second reading test because the state-mandated DIBELS assessment didn’t get the information needed, PED replaced it with Istation.

By early accounts Istation is a much better test. It is given on iPads or computers and is adaptive, meaning it adjusts up or down based on each individual student’s ability. It means teachers no longer have to take children, one by one, out of the classroom to administer the test and can monitor their class while breaking testtakers into small groups and/or phasing the starts of assessments. Plus, it’s cheaper — just $600,000 compared to DIBELS’ $1.9 million price tag. And yet...

Some school districts and school boards are upset they didn’t get much advance notice of the change. After all, the start of a new school year is confusing enough if you’re a kindergartener who doesn’t know where the potty is or where to stow your backpack, or a teacher getting a new school year underway, without having a new test thrown at you at the last minute.

While PED gave superintendents a heads-up back in April that the reading assessment was up for bid and could change, it was during one of Secretary of Education Hanna Skandera’s every-other-week telephone briefings. And some superintendents — apparently including APS Superintendent Raquel Reedy — don’t avail themselves of those information opportunities.

Of course it would have made sense for Skandera and PED to let districts know, in let’s say an email. But in any case, some districts found out in July, just a few weeks before school started, that they had to administer the first of three annual Istation assessments in the first 30 school days.

And while PED doubled the first testing window from the usual 15 days for DIBELS to make up for the short notice, that short notice didn’t have to happen.

All superintendents should participate in the conference call, whether or not they buy into the Skandera/ Gov. Susana Martinez education reforms that are trying to pull New Mexico out of last place on too many lists. Information is power, and superintendents owe it to their teachers, students, parents and taxpayers to know and share what is going on in the system.

Meanwhile, PED can’t rely on those superintendents who wisely buy into reform to provide some sort of trickle-down information pipeline to the rest of the state’s educators. With 89 districts and more than 300,000 students, it is essential those on the classroom front lines are in the loop. On Thursday, Skandera acknowledged communication could have been better and said her team is working on ways to get information to teachers while still respecting school and district leaders. Also Thursday, PED announced it would add another 10 school days to the inaugural window, making it 40 days, a full eight weeks.

This test change should have been a win-win for everyone from the get-go, and it still very well could be. Consider it another reform lesson learned.