{"id":21747,"date":"2015-10-25T08:01:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T15:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/obama-limit-standardized-tests\/"},"modified":"2015-10-25T08:01:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T15:01:44","slug":"obama-limit-standardized-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/obama-limit-standardized-tests\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama: Limit standardized tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014<\/strong> Addressing one of education\u2019s most divisive issues, President Barack Obama on Saturday called for capping standardized testing at 2 percent of classroom time and said the government shares responsibility for turning tests into the be-all and end-all of American schools.<\/p>\n

Students spend about 20 to 25 hours a school year taking standardized tests, according to a study of the nation\u2019s 66 largest school districts that was released Saturday by the Council of the Great City Schools. But it\u2019s not known how much class time students spend preparing for tests that became mandatory, starting in third grade, under No Child Left Behind law and are a flashpoint in the debate over the Common Core academic standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning is about so much more than just filling in the right bubble,\u201d Obama said in a video released on Facebook. \u201cSo we\u2019re going to work with states, school districts, teachers, and parents to make sure that we\u2019re not obsessing about testing.\u201d<\/p>\n

To drive the point home, Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan plan an Oval Office meeting Monday with teachers and school officials working to reduce testing time.<\/p>\n

And from the 2016 presidential campaign, Democratic contender Hillary Rodham Clinton embraced the principles laid out by Obama. \u201cWe should be ruthless in looking at tests and eliminating them if they do not actually help us move our kids forward,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n

In all, between pre-K and 12th grade, students take about 112 standardized exams, according to the council report. It said testing amounts to 2.3 percent of classroom time for the average 8th-grader.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much constitutes too much time is really difficult to answer,\u201d said Michael Casserly, the council\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n

Obama cannot force states or districts to limit testing, which has drawn consternation from parents and teachers. But Obama directed the Education Department to make it easier for states to satisfy federal testing mandates and he urged states and districts to use factors beyond testing to assess student performance.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration said it still supports standardized tests as a necessary assessment tool, and there are no signs they are going away soon.<\/p>\n

Both the House and Senate versions of an update to No Child Left Behind would preserve annual reading and math exams, although the House version would diminish their significance in determining whether schools are up to par. The legislation is in limbo while House and Senate negotiators figure out how to reconcile the competing versions.<\/p>\n

Administration officials said that in many cases, testing is redundant, poorly aligned with curriculum or simply overkill. They said the administration supports legislative proposals to cap testing time on a federal level, but wanted to offer states a model for how to cut down on testing absent congressional action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just a lot of testing going on, and it\u2019s not always terribly useful,\u201d Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House\u2019s Domestic Policy Council, said in an interview. \u201cIn the worst case, it can sap the joy and fun out of the classroom for students and for teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Casserly said his group found examples of testing redundancy that could be cut to create more instructional time. For example, some states and school districts were requiring both end-of-year tests and end-of-course tests in the same subjects in the same grade.<\/p>\n

To ease the testing burden, the administration will provide states with guidance about how they can satisfy federal testing requirements in less time or in more creative ways, including federal waivers to No Child Left Behind that the Education Department readily has handed out. For example, some 8th-grade students who take high school-level coursework currently take both 8th-grade and high school assessments, but the administration will allow them to opt out of the 8th-grade tests.<\/p>\n

The value of standardized tests taps into the national debate about the federal government\u2019s role in local schools; both political parties generally support scaling back Washington\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n

Central to that debate is Common Core, a set of universal, college-ready academic standards in reading and math developed by state education officials. The federal government doesn\u2019t require Common Core, but the administration has backed it with money. About 12 million students last spring took tests based on the curriculum.<\/p>\n

Teachers\u2019 unions have fought hard against one-size-fits-all tests for students being tied to their teachers\u2019 performance evaluations. Among parents with children in public schools, 63 percent were opposed to linking teacher evaluations to their students\u2019 test scores in a recent Gallup Poll.<\/p>\n

Among other findings in the council report:<\/p>\n

\u2014The most tests were required in 8th and 10th grade; the fewest were in pre-K, kindergarten and 1st grade.<\/p>\n

\u2014Four in 10 districts report having to wait between two months and four months before getting state test results.<\/p>\n

\u2014Some pockets of the country had substantial numbers of students opting out of standardized tests. But the overall opt-out rate was usually less than 1 percent.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http:\/\/twitter.com\/joshledermanAP and Jennifer C. Kerr at http:\/\/twitter.com\/jckerr9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Addressing one of education\u2019s most divisive issues, President Barack Obama on Saturday called for capping standardized testing at 2 percent of classroom time and said the government shares responsibility for turning tests into the be-all and end-all of American schools. Students spend about 20 to 25 hours a school year taking standardized tests, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-21747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21747"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}