Education board advised on testing

by Cynthia Howell

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

An Arkansas Department of Education effort now under way to develop a testing program that will combine the state’s Benchmark Exam with a nationally standardized test into just one annual test for students won praise and a word of caution Monday from a former member of the state Board of Education. 

Luke Gordy, who became executive director of Arkansans For Education Reform after nine years on the state Education Board, told his former colleagues that Arkansas students are tested too much and that an “augmented” or combined test would allow the state to comply with state and federal laws “through a more effective and streamlined process.” Gordy expressed concern about the number of open-response questions that could appear on the new test and thus cause a delay in getting student scores. 

The Arkansans for Education Reform is a nonprofit foundation established to educate parents and others about accountability, school choice and other measures intended to improve public education. The group’s organizers include Arkansas business leaders Claiborne Deming, president and chief executive officer of the Murphy Oil Corp., of El Dorado; Walter E. Hussman Jr., publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Jackson T. “Steve” Stephens Jr., chairman of Exoxemis Inc. in Little Rock; and Jim Walton, chairman of Arvest Bank in Bentonville. 

Arkansas students now take a nationally standardized exam, the Iowa test of Basic Skills, that compares the achievement levels of Arkansas students with a national sample of students who took the same test. 

Students also take the Arkansas Benchmark and End-of-Course exams, which test their knowledge of the academic material that state teachers have said students should know. Those state tests determine whether students are achieving at grade level as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. 

But the state tests include open-response and essay questions, which makes grading them time-consuming, and scores aren’t available until months later. 

Also, the exams are given earlier each school year. They were given in March this past school year, and the writing test will be administered in February this school year. 

Gordy said that he strongly advocated for the state Benchmark and End of Course exams but that an augmented test, piloted last May in 14 of the state’s school districts at the expense of business leaders, marks the “next step” in student assessment. 

That pilot tested 5,000 fourthgraders in districts, including Pine Bluff, Little Rock, North Little Rock, Fort Smith, Hot Springs, Van Buren, Searcy and Alma. The districts received the score results in three weeks. 

“[I’m not for] throwing out the baby with the bath water, but rather preserving the important components of the Benchmark examinations while addressing the current difficulties of testing windows and timely return of data,” Gordy said. 

The Education Department earlier this year put out a request for proposals from testing companies for an augmented test that would include questions about the Arkansas education standards along with questions from a nationally standardized test. Two companies have responded, Gayle Potter — the department’s associate director of curriculum, assessment and research — said Monday, and those are being evaluated and will be presented to the Education Board for a possible vote in January. 

Any change in the state’s testing program would have to be reviewed for its compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act by the U.S. Department of Education before it could be put into operation. 

Gordy, who has worked with the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators on the issue of an augmented test, voiced concerns Monday about one particular provision of the state’s request for proposals that called for a 50-50 ratio of multiple choice and open-response questions. He warned that such a requirement will exacerbate the problem of getting test results back in a timely fashion. 

Ken James, the state’s commissioner of education, said the testing companies were given the latitude to design the test although they were also told that the state’s history was to give a test that had a balance of open-response and multiple-choice questions. He said there is value in the questions in which students have to write responses. 

“We want a sizable number of open-response items because that’s going to lead our kids to higher levels of thinking and higher levels of learning,” he said. “We have to make sure whatever the assessment is, it has to be the best. We are more than open to looking at the augmented test because it does have some attractive features.”