Testimony On High School Assessment Program
Testimony of Erin Frere
Tenth Grade English Teacher, McDonough High School
Charles County Public Schools
House Appropriations Committee and
The House Ways and Means Committee
February 9, 2007
Educators and students understand and agree that testing is needed to comply with federal rules and to maintain high academic standards. However, as a classroom teacher who administers the test, I sometimes feel that the Maryland HSA has become a test of endurance, not an indicator of learning.
Although many college students face tests from two to three hours in duration, our freshmen and sophomore students are only fourteen- and fifteen-year-old children. They must face four of these three-hour tests in order to graduate. Over the years, students have told me how anxious they were the night before the test. Others have come back from the test exhausted and defeated.
Because the HSA is a three-hour test, the entire school building must bend to fit the demands of those students being tested. For example, if we are going to be testing 350 tenth-grade students in May, we need to find 350 desks where those students can test without being disturbed. This means other teachers will be in rooms that are not conducive to education. In the past, I've been forced to try to conduct class in the cafeteria, the gym, and in classrooms without enough desks, so that students have had to sit on the floor or stand for the entire period.
For the week of the HSA, the whole building succumbs to the needs of that test for the duration of that test. These tests often interfere with the lunch schedules of students, which means staff must be found to watch the students while they eat their meals during a time where there would not usually be a lunch. Every day that the HSA is given, our school must hire an additional two to four substitutes to help to cover staffing needs. This becomes a financial burden on the schools. Because the test lasts the duration of the morning, it is common for teachers of tested students to see one class only once or twice during the week of testing, while seeing the other classes all four or five days of that week. This, naturally, is a frustrating problem, because one class will be a week ahead of the other students. Between county testing, which takes place throughout the year in preparation for the HAS, and the week of the state tests, I lose 9-13% of teaching time every year to tests.
Although the HSA causes more than a few headaches for the staff and faculty, I am more concerned about how it affects students who are capable of passing the class but do not test well. For example, last year in my tenth-grade honors class, I had a student who was a solid B student. He proved to me through a variety of assignments that he understood and retained the reading and writing skills we covered in class. Yet time after time, from pop quizzes through the state assessment, he failed in testing situations. He and I worked after school for a month to prepare him for the HSA, but to no avail. On his transcript, when he applies to colleges, this bright student will carry the unfair conclusion that he is not proficient in English. Luckily for him, the English HSA was not a graduation requirement last year. I pity the students I have this year who are similar to him. Not only will they carry the scarlet letter of “basic” on their transcripts, they will not be able to graduate high school, despite being successful all year in the classroom.
Lastly, I would like to speak in defense of our special education students and English Language Learners. It makes no possible sense to hold a special education student accountable on a three-hour test. At that point, the test is no longer a test of academic achievement, but of personal endurance.
Many English Language Learners students have individualized education programs that mandate that they have the test read aloud to them. Each one of those students needs a teacher to do that. Who is covering those teachers' classes while they are reading to those students? Many of these students are required to have extra time when they take the test. A teacher needs to sit with them for the three, four, or five hours it takes them to finish. Who is watching those teachers' classes while they are proctoring the test? Some of our special education students have taken scientifically based tests that prove that they read at reading levels as low as first grade. Why should they then be forced to endure the humiliation of failing a tenth-grade test? As of now, special education students must fail the HSA twice and file an appeal in order to not have the HSA be used as a graduation requirement. Why put these students through the embarrassment of failing twice? Why put the tax payers through paying for two tests? Why waste the time of two scorers to score those tests twice?
Using the three-hour HSA as a graduation requirement puts an undue burden on schools, but more importantly, it hurts some of our most vulnerable students. I urge the committee to look at the many problems associated with the High School Assessment program and work to help us keep this test in perspective, for the sake of our students. Thank you for your consideration.
