Marion County Public Schools alerted principals Monday?that one previously required local student assessments could well be suspended.
In the memo, Marion County Deputy Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, Dr. Jonathan Grantham, stated the fact that change came in an effort to provide more instructional here we are at students.
“Our superintendent promised to check out required assessments as well as prevent any that didn’t meet specific needs as a student,” said Kevin Christian, Advertising Officer for Marion County Public Schools. “This move also allows teachers added time to undertake them best — teach our students.”
Assessments designed to not be required include AIMSweb Benchmarks, ELA and Math Learning Checks, Number Fluency Checks and a few other assessments. These assessments are generally geared toward providing teachers with data designed to make them aware of of methods each student is performing inside of a given subject.
Students in grades kindergarten through fifth grade will originate from three to seven assessments this school year, based on their grade level. Assessments include writing assessments, reading exams and also the Florida Standards Assessments (FSA), the desired statewide test that replaced the FCAT in 2014.
News of such changes was well received by Treasa Buck, principal of Eighth Street Elementary School, one of the 31 elementary schools in Marion County. Buck revealed that a lot of the previously required assessments had time from the students’ actual learning time, which has been a detail that upset parents as well as teachers.
“When you’re doing 4, 5, 6 (assessments) at the same time, that’s really removing from teaching time,” Buck said. “I is able to see the place that the parents were upset. (They assume) ‘Well I send my children to university to know and to discover so they go back home and they did was the test.'”
One of your assessments suspended within the schools, AIMSweb Benchmark Assessments, measure areas like letter naming and letter-sound fluency. These benchmark assessments received approximately 3 times a year and according to Buck, their data was not always conclusive enough.
Buck said these assessments didn’t pinpoint what are the specific dilemma is when using the student and would likely stick them to a level. Teachers would then attempt to help students without really knowing detailed what sort of student was struggling.
While these assessments won’t need, according to the memo they should certainly available if the teacher feels a specific student would make use of them.
Rachel Burrage, a 1st grade teacher at Eighth Street Elementary, agrees with the changes and said the continual assessments were not helpful to students.
“The testing environment is quite stressful for that generation I teach, since i teach 6-and-7-year-olds, and they are generally being forced to sit for an extended timeframe which is obviously very, very hard for any child, especially of these age range,” Burrage said. “Its hardly developmentally appropriate to inquire about these phones sit still as well as consentrate on one job for above about 10-15 minutes.”
Burrage asserted that all students, particularly those who performed lower on assessments, would become emotionally distressed during assessments. The reality that there will be fewer assessments will help with these students’ levels of stress.
Marion County Schools can be able to adjust how much given assessments as they simply think fit with less pressure via county requirements.
“Were usually qualified to tailor our assessments and our instruction as to what Eighth Street Elementary needs much like the next school is go[ing to] be ready to tailor theirs as to what their kids’ schools need and never necessarily use a blanket assessment for every single kid to look at,” Buck said.
