Standardized Tests

Several prominent Virginia superintendents are pushing the state to give standardized tests months earlier in the school year, a shift they say would reduce the impact of testing on classes and free teachers to offer more meaningful lessons. The proposal, spearheaded by Fairfax County Superintendent Jack D. Dale and leaders of four other large school systems, has drawn intense resistance from state education officials in Richmond. Dale, who leads the state's largest school system, and the other superintendents want to...

The Maryland State Department of Education has approved 21 out of 22 teacher and principal evaluation plans that are required to take effect for the 2013-14 school year. The department announced the approvals Thursday, almost a week after seven school systems whose original plans were rejected had to turn in revisions or face defaulting to the state's own teacher evaluation model. There has been tension between some local school districts and the state over how to tie standardized tests to teacher performance.

The Common Core State Standards have been adopted by 45 states and the District as the foundation for what students in America's public schools need to know and be able to do. They will require our children to develop a deeper, more conceptual understanding in mathematics and English-language arts. They hold tremendous promise for improving our international competitiveness. The standards could also trigger a sea change in education, the kind that colleges, businesses and politicians have been talking about — if we give...

As Joshua P. Starr enters his third year as superintendent of Montgomery County's schools, he'll have Andrew Zuckerman as his new chief of staff to help lead the system. Zuckerman, 36, is scheduled to start working in Montgomery on June 17 after spending five years as an administrator in Prince George's County, most recently working as an associate superintendent overseeing 88 schools with 46,000 students. With 14 years experience in education, Zuckerman has also worked in charter and traditional schools...

All Virginia students will have to log on to a computer to take this year's Standards of Learning tests, making Virginia one of the only states to wholly abandon the nearly ubiquitous paper-and-pencil bubble sheets. With spring testing in reading and math underway in many schools this week, the move to electronic tests means that Virginia, one of the few states that did not adopt national academic standards, has become a model for the dozens of states that did. Those states are scrambling to meet a fast-approaching...

For more than a decade, school standardized tests have been the magic keys that were supposed to unlock the door to a promised realm of American students able to read and do sums as well as their counterparts in Asia and Europe. A generation of U.S. education reformers has assured us that if we would just rely mostly on test scores and other hard data to guide decisions, then all manner of good results would ensue. Foundations gave millions of dollars to encourage it. The...

Standardized testing rules the world of American education these days, in case you hadn't noticed. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top , college admissions and the nation's very future all revolve around performance on standardized exams. Business leaders, Obama administration officials, big-city school superintendents and opinion-makers all preach that America must raise our test scores, given that we've fallen dangerously behind the Chinese, the Finns, the Liechtensteiners and plenty more in...

Dear Extra Credit : It was the night before my third-grade-history Standards of Learning test, and I was studying flashcards. I had them memorized to a T, but I realize now that I knew absolutely nothing of consequence. As my mom read the name on the card, Paul Revere, I parroted back the exact words on the flashcard: "The British are coming! The British are coming!" But I didn't know who he was or what his historical significance was. In fact, I told my mom it didn't matter.

When Frederick J. Kelly invented the multiple-choice test in 1914, he was addressing a national crisis. The ranks of students attending secondary school had swollen from 200,000 in 1890 to more than 1.5 millionas immigrants streamed onto American shores, and as new laws made two years of high school compulsory for everyone and not simply a desirable option for the college bound. World War I added to the problem, creating a teacher shortage with men fighting abroad and women working in factories...

Cheating on standardized tests in the District would be illegal under a bill introduced in the D.C. Council, and a teacher or principal found guilty of violating the law would lose his professional license and face a fine of thousands of dollars. The measure — which council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) and colleagues Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) introduced Tuesday — comes in response to persistent allegations that cheating led to inflated scores in...

Greg Barlow did not want his fourth-grade son to take the Standards of Learning math test, but he did not know what would happen if he refused. Would his son get a failing grade? Would it go on his permanent record? Barlow researched state and local codes and finally decided to try it. He sent an e-mail to his son's principal and teacher at his Prince William elementary school, informing them that he planned to keep his son home on test day. "It was the scariest thing I've ever done," said Barlow, a former Air...

Widespread technical glitches interrupted thousands of Fairfax County schools students taking Virginia's standards of learning tests online Thursday. In a letter to parents, the district acknowledged "significant problems" while administering the online tests due to an outage with the school system's Internet service provider. About half of Fairfax County schools were affected by the Internet outage, the administration said. Many schools had to cancel the testing, and students will...

All Virginia students will have to log on to a computer to take this year's Standards of Learning tests, making Virginia one of the only states to wholly abandon the nearly ubiquitous paper-and-pencil bubble sheets. With spring testing in reading and math underway in many schools this week, the move to electronic tests means that Virginia, one of the few states that did not adopt national academic standards, has become a model for the dozens of states that did. Those states are scrambling to meet a...

In the past two school years, 40 states detected potential cheating on standardized exams given to public school students in grades 3 to 12, according to a new report released by the Government Accountability Office. Of those states, 33 confirmed at least one instance of cheating, and 32 states canceled or invalidated test results from individual students, schools or districts as a result of either suspected or confirmed cheating, the GAO found. The GAO collected data from the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012...

Prince William County high school students can look forward to fewer tests next year, as school officials have eliminated mandatory midterm exams. The county's high school principals unanimously signed on to a one-year pilot program that will free teachers from administering required semester exams in January and give them more time to prepare for end-of-year tests. "Teachers do feel pressed for time," said Michael A. Mulgrew, associate superintendent for high schools in Prince William.

Let's face it – nobody likes taking tests. Exams, by nature, elicit a certain amount of anxiety. Tension. Maybe even fear. But New York's high-stakes standardized tests, given to all public school students, have rattled way more than a few nerves. Enough students have actually thrown up on their tests that schools are reportedly circulating procedures on how to handle vomit-covered tests. One Long Island superintendent told the Wall Street Journal that some kids did, indeed, get...

The Maryland State Department of Education has told nine counties to increase the use of standardized tests in its teacher and principal evaluation models after rejecting plans the school systems submitted for approval. The state has specifically told the counties to make scores from the Maryland School Assessment at least 20 percent of the measure schools use to calculate how well students are learning as a variable judging educator performance. The department earlier this month ...

Brian Donlon took notes in a fat three-ring binder, a veteran teacher critiquing the work of a less experienced peer. He learned the young teacher gets visibly frazzled during instruction and sometimes gives students answers to questions without encouraging them to think on their own. If she does not make progress, Donlon will be one of the people to help decide whether she gets fired. Donlon, a high school social studies teacher, serves on the Montgomery County...

18 The number of D.C. classrooms in which teachers cheated last year on standardized tests, according to the results of an Office of the State Superintendent of Education investigation released this month. Violations included providing students with answers or using prohibited electronic devices. "What on earth is going on?" — U-Va. alumnus, in an e-mail to Rector Helen Dragas shortly after the June ouster of President Teresa A. Sullivan

"THE FUTURE of school reform in the District depends on having assessments that are beyond reproach. " That was the explanation D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) gave for his introduction of legislation that would strengthen the integrity of public-school testing. Mr. Catania's focus on the future is a much-needed, constructive approach to concerns about possible cheating. Mr. Catania, chair of the council's education committee, will hold a hearing Thursday on legislation that would make cheating on standardized...