Name: Ohio lawmakers push to lift testing requirements as school resumes amid pandemic
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Ohio lawmakers push to lift testing requirements as school resumes amid pandemic

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Catherine Candiskyccandisky@dispatch.comView CommentsAs educators determine how far students have fallen behind following the abrupt move to remote learning last March and ongoing COVID-19 disruptions in schools this fall, state lawmakers are looking to ease up on testing requirements.“We’re seeing schools have a very strong desire to focus on delivering strong academic content to kids at this point and they are very leery of time being taken up with tests that have traditionally been used to evaluate teachers, students, school districts,” said Senate Education Chairwoman Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering.“We know those tests can be distracting,” she said.A bipartisan bill, which received its first hearing in the Senate last week, seeks to lift state testing requirements — including elementary-school assessments and high school end-of-course exams — directing the Department of Education to seek a waiver from federal testing mandates.U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last week suggested that Ohio may not have the option, telling state school chiefs that the administration is not likely to lift federal requirements that mandate all but two of the roughly 20 standardized tests given to Ohio students during their K-12 career.The state legislation also would prohibit the department from issuing state report cards for schools and districts for this school year and the next, and give districts flexibility with graduation requirements, third-grade reading guarantee, teacher evaluations and other accountability measures that rely on data from the assessments.“Missing school has produced serious gaps in student learning. Coupled with the normal summer losses, teachers will need to focus on getting students back on track,” Sen. Teresa Fedor, co-sponsor of Senate Bill 358, testified. “Any pressure we can relieve so that the focus is on teaching and learning, rather than testing and evaluating, will help our students succeed in the long-term.”As students return for the 2020-2021 school year, some are receiving face-to-face instruction in the classroom, others are online and many are doing a combination of the two.Ohio Schools Superintendent Paolo DeMaria agrees that the focus should be on students and teaching.“When we talk about how testing is used — rating and ranking and judging — I’m in the camp where that’s what doesn’t sit well with me, because this is not the time to judge the quality of the performance of schools in the context that different communities have experienced this in different ways and it’s had different impacts on students,” DeMaria said. “What we really want to do is rally around our best effort to continue to provide students with an excellent education and to grow and learn.”While Senate Bill 358 by Fedor, a Toledo Democrat, and Republican Sen. Nathan Manning, of North Ridgeville, is receiving much support from education groups, some are arguing that testing may still be useful.“We still need to know where kids are academically,” Lehner said.Some studies have shown that students lost seven months to a year of learning after schools switched to online learning last March.“The truth is, we don’t know how far behind kids have fallen or if some students have fallen further behind than others. It is critical that we administer state assessments, not as punishment, but as a tool to figure out exactly what students have learned in these tumultuous months,” said Chad Aldis, vice president for policy and advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.“Parents need to know if their fifth-grader has learned what fifth-graders are supposed to learn. Communities need to know if their efforts to educate students remotely has worked … and the state needs to know whether more resources might be necessary in districts that have been impacted more than others.”In the absence of uniform state assessments, school presumably could use diagnostic evaluations like those offered by the state Department of Education, but they likely would vary district to district.Fedor, a retired elementary school teacher, said in an interview with The Dispatch that given the different school models and uncertainty of how the coronavirus could upend classes this fall, statewide standardized tests can’t be administered fairly or effectively.“How can you get a good read of how children are doing, how schools are doing with COVID-19 wreaking havoc in communities and outbreaks impossible to predict?” Fedor asked.“The (state) testing needs to be put aside and we need to rely on tools that the schools use for diagnostic reasons and purposes so they know how to address (student) needs,” she said. “We need to trust the teachers; we need to trust the educators and we need to give them as much flexibility as possible because we don’t know what conditions every school district is going to have.”DeMaria offered this advice:”People say we should measure the learning loss, but why don’t we just figure out where students are and do our best to keep them moving forward? And to the extent we can figure out ways to accelerate that forward movement, we should do that.”ccandisky@dispatch.com@ccandiskyView Comments

Catherine Candiskyccandisky@dispatch.comView CommentsAs educators determine how far students have fallen behind following the abrupt move to remote learning last March and ongoing COVID-19 disruptions in schools this fall, state lawmakers are looking to ease up on testing requirements.“We’re seeing schools have a very strong desire to focus on delivering strong academic content to kids at this point and they are very leery of time being taken up with tests that have traditionally been used to evaluate teachers, students, school districts,” said Senate Education Chairwoman Peggy Lehner,...

Ohio lawmakers push to lift testing requirements as school resumes amid pandemic

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