At the Jan. 13 Levittown Board of Education meeting both the Assistant Superintendent for Instruction Robert Davis and Superintendent Dr. Herman Sirois spoke about some of the concerns and frustrations that the district had about the new fourth grade tests, which had begun that week.

The week of Jan. 11, fourth grade students across New York State began taking the new English Language Arts examinations that have been mandated by the state. In June these students will also have to take a new math examination mandated by the state.

According to Davis, the first concern that the district has with these tests is that the rules have changed for these students midstream. He said these children have been in school four to five years now and one or two years ago the district never had any reason to think that they would be taking this kind of test. He called the exams, "a midstream correction," and said that it is not an awful situation but that it was a problem. He said the next concern they have is the pressure that this test and the two other tests (the math and an already established science exam) is putting on the teachers and the students in the fourth grade.

Another main concern with the tests is the amount of time that teachers are going to have to be out of the classroom. The district is required to send teachers to grade the tests so between training the fourth grade teachers in testing protocol, teaching them how to score them, and then the actual scoring of the tests, fourth grade teachers will be missing 2-3 days for each of these tests. On the day of the scoring the district is required to send 72 teachers, which represents three full grade levels, to the scoring site.

Financially, these tests are costing the district quite a large sum of money. They need to pay for substitute teachers for those who are out each of the days of training and scoring, which according to Davis adds up to many thousands of dollars. The district must also pay $5 per student to have the test scored which is a major frustration for the district because, according to Sirois, "We are being charged $5 per student for a test that we are required to send 72 teachers to correct, so we are correcting the tests, scoring the tests, and are being charged for scoring the tests." The district may also be charged for the teachers to be at the scoring site. They must also ship the test booklets to a destruction site so that the test remains secure.

The security of the tests has also been an issue recently. There have been questions raised about the fairness of the tests because all the exams were supposed to be shipped in a secure manner and some schools received them unsecured, two weeks before the exam, while other schools did not even receive the exams until the day after they were scheduled to begin. Davis also expressed a concern because some of the passages on the exam were in other books and periodicals so some of the students had seen them prior to the exam while others had not. Davis stated, "The sense that this was a secure test is not the case. It was secure for some people who were at a disadvantage for that reason. For other people it wasn't a secure test and it has given them an advantage."

The security of the tests puts even more pressure on the students and the district because the state has yet to determine what the passing grade for the tests is going to be and what decisions will be based on the test scores. According to Sirois, many superintendents met with the Commissioner of Education Richard Mills and asked him what the passing grade would be for the test and they were told that would not be determined until after the tests are scored. Districts will not know what the standards of the test are until April, after the scoring has taken place. Davis believes that there will be high stake decisions made based on these tests, which he thinks is unfair considering that the exams may not have been given on equal footing. He said that they also have no reason to believe that the scoring of the tests will be reliable because teachers will only be trained in the scoring for a few hours and the process will be subjective.

When asked if there were any positive aspects of the new examinations, Davis stated, "Anytime you make a reasonable attempt to raise standards, that's fine. Whether this test raises standards or not will be seen. We don't know if they are raising standards or not because we don't know yet what the standards are." He added, "You don't fatten a cow by weighing it. We are weighing the kids and thinking they are going to be better students for that reason. Whether student learning improves remains to be seen and if it does and it was reasonable then it's fine but right now there are too many questions."