Smarter Balanced Forum Reveals Weak Arguments of Test Supporters
By: Kathleen Jeskey
Originally posted on her blog http://www.teachertalkstruth.com/blog/smarter-balanced-forum-reveals-weak-arguments-of-test-supporters
On Thursday night, I attended a forum held by The Oregonian newspaper titled, "The Big Idea: Education and Test Anxiety". The event consisted of a panel of five: Derek Brown, Director of Assessment at Oregon Department of Education; Toya Fick, Executive Director of Stand for Children; Lew Frederick, Democratic State Representative, House District 43 in Portland; Rob Saxton, Superintendent of Northwest Regional Educational Service District; and David Wilkinson, Westview High School Teacher.
There was some discussion around the length of the SBAC test. Derek Brown claimed that the SBAC takes less time than the old OAKS.
He stated that the math test takes about 2 and a half hours (a low estimate even according to SBAC: see pg. 34) and failed to mention the English Language Arts portion of the test. Brown explained further that while many students took up to three opportunities on OAKS, SBAC gives only one opportunity, which cuts the time for test taking.
When Mr. Wilkinson raised these points, we were told by Mr. Brown that research was being done to improve the tests, including possibly shortening them. I kept wondering...
I'm not the only one who's wondering that.
Someone asked why we couldn't use sampling of students, why must every student be tested every year if the goal is systems accountability? We could maintain systems accountability with sampling, and it wouldn't be nearly as expensive.
I assert that one of the reasons, besides obtaining massive amounts of data on every single student, is that testing companies make more money if more tests are given.
Rob Saxton stated that we needed to test every student because if we didn't, parents would have no way of knowing how their children were doing in school. 
There was then again insistence from Derek Brown that the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) the test delivery system for Smarter Balanced, would be working on improving the tests so that the results would be more informative to parents and teachers, as well as making the tests shorter. At one point, Rob Saxton stated that Smarter Balanced was taking more time than OAKS, contradicting Brown's earlier statement about OAKS taking less time than SBAC.
Toya Fick questioned how we would know where our gaps in student learning are without these tests. I assert that we already know where the gaps lie. Derek Brown stated at the beginning of the forum that SBAC was revealing the same gaps for students that we have seen in the past: gaps based on ethnicity, status as an English Learner, Special Education status, and poverty. In fact, it appears that SBAC did a great job of measuring poverty in California.
I question when we are going to actually do something about those gaps besides measure them. 
Rob Saxton asked how we will know the needs of our students if we don't have these tests. How will we know what they need in order to achieve? (I thought back again to that $27 million.)
Lew Frederick and David Wilkinson did a fabulous job of explaining why we don't need these very expensive tests, how they are not effective for the purposes they are being used for, how they are taking away a great deal of instructional time, narrowing the curriculum, and changing the focus of teaching and learning from student centered to test centered.
Maybe it's not surprising that he didn't get his staff on board with a project that not only seems to be a better way to assess students, but was a cooperative effort between teachers and the state that should be a standard practice, not an afterthought.
That work not only produced a plan for a better assessment system, but I'm guessing that work cost a lot of money as well. Now we're just going to ignore it and do SBAC harder?https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8gXjrg0OWluX2dfSm95ZVpxSDg/view?usp=sharing