This week's guest blogger is Melissa Lefebvre, the District's Curriculum Coordinator.
Each spring, our students in grades 3 through 8 have an opportunity to experience the Smarter Balanced Assessment. This is an assessment that provides the district with very detailed information about each student’s performance as well as overall strengths and weaknesses of each school and the district as a whole. These scores are also helpful in determining which students to invite to school intervention programs.
Though the assessment has many benefits, it is not without its critics. Even though Smarter Balanced Testing Week may ensure a week with little to no homework, many students do not favor testing on a computer for four, one to two hour sessions throughout the week. Although the information gained is helpful to improve teaching practices, teachers must give up time for lessons and projects in order to administer the assessment to their students. Teachers find it difficult to access computer labs for lessons during this time because students are testing in them. Tests are administered in April or May, so teachers have not yet finished teaching the year’s curriculum.
State and federal assessments probably won’t disappear anytime soon, but what if there was a better way to assess student and school performance without taking so much time away from instruction? What if there was an assessment that is more meaningful to students? An assessment that could be administered when students were ready, and not only in April or May? The NH PACE (Performance Assessment for Competency Education) model addresses some of these concerns. The model helps to limit the amount standardized testing: PACE districts only give the Smarter Balanced Assessment to students once in elementary school, once in middle school, and give the SAT once in high school. Under the model, students take the Smarter Balanced Assessment only three years instead of seven. In all other years (PACE years), students will be given a performance assessment created by a team of teachers in the school and approved by the state. Other than limiting the time spent on standardized testing, the NH PACE initiative has some other benefits:
- PACE assessments are created collaboratively by the teachers in the district, so what is being assessed is being determined by the teachers, not an outside assessment company
- PACE assessments are administered when the teachers feel the students are ready, possibly after the end of a unit where learning is more recent
- Teacher created PACE assessments are generally more engaging for students than traditional standardized assessments
- Teachers gain expert-level feedback on the assessments they create for PACE
Many NH districts have already joined this effort and adopted this model: Sanborn Regional, Rochester, Souhegan, Pittsfield, and Epping, just to name a few. Our district’s Competency Committee, composed of teachers and building principals, is currently considering the benefits of taking part in this movement and the possibility of adopting the PACE model and moving toward a more meaningful system of assessment. For more information, please visit http://education.nh.gov/assessment-systems/pace.htm.
By Melissa Lefebvre, Curriculum Coordinator
