A testing reform package approved by the Illinois State Board of Education Thursday would reduce the number of standardized tests students take and save local school districts millions of dollars, state officials said.
By requiring the Illinois Standards Achievement Test each year from 3rd through 11th grades, the state’s public schools could be held more accountable and put Illinois more in line with the rest of the nation.
State Supt. Glen “Max” McGee said he hopes 85 percent of students would pass the ISAT, even though a school could have two-thirds of its students fail before the school would go on the state’s academic warning list.
The $129 million proposal to test every child in reading, writing and arithmetic will likely need a hefty infusion of cash and parts of it require approval by the state legislature. It lays out an elaborate system for helping struggling schools improve and rewarding those that excel based on ISAT performance.
State board officials plan to seek legislators’ approval next year and implement the package beginning in 2002.
The plan, announced at a board meeting Wednesday, immediately prompted complaints from some parents, teachers and legislators that schools already give up too much classroom instruction time in favor of testing.
But McGee said he hopes school districts will scrap the other standardized tests they now use and replace them with annual ISATs. Because the state pays to administer the ISAT, districts would save the money they spend on the other tests.
If annual testing is approved, the state would bump from $19 million to $40 million the amount it spends each year to create and administer the ISATs.
“The goal of the State Board of Education is not to add to the student testing burden … but to replace the current annual norm referenced tests that almost every school district in the state uses,” McGee said. “By doing this, we can help these districts save an extraordinary amount of money.”
Phil Hansen, chief accountability officer for Chicago Public Schools, said officials would be “thrilled” with annual state testing, saying it makes it easier to “measure movement of students.” He said Chicago school officials might even consider serving as a pilot district for annual ISATs.
Central to the plan is a proposal to scrap the current system of ranking and sanctioning schools based solely on student performance on biannual state tests.
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Instead, schools would continue to be sanctioned based on test performance, but also would be rewarded for a host of other achievements.
The state board would need to boost spending from $71 million to $129 million. The bulk of that increase–about $26 million–would go toward assisting schools where students are struggling to meet state academic standards.
An additional $20 million would be set aside to reward schools where students are excelling or where students show dramatic improvement. For instance, a so-called failing schools could still get a state “recognition” award–and access to state grants–if attendance rates increase or dropout rates decrease.
The proposal also lowers the bar for placing schools on academic warning. Currently, schools land on the list if more than 50 percent of their students fail state tests. Under the new plan, schools would not go onto that list until 67 percent of students flunked. A warning list designation triggers a set of state interventions that can ultimately lead to state takeover of a school.
Board of education officials argue that changing the bar is not necessarily “lowering standards.” McGee said schools with less than 50 percent of students meeting standards will still be considered failing and will continue to receive state help–albeit not as much help as if they had landed on the list.