Wisconsin's third-graders are getting ready to sharpen, read, and bubble:
Sometime in the next three weeks, nearly every public school third-grader in Wisconsin will be sharpening his or her No. 2 pencils. Elementary schools are giving the Wisconsin Reading and Comprehension Test to determine if students are reading at the third-grade level.
"It's kind of a high-stakes test for the school," said Abbotsford Elementary School Principal Jerry Zanotelli. "I think it's more stressful for staff and the schools themselves."
Even though the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction does not impose any sanctions if a student or a school performs poorly, the results are published and allow the public can review district performances.
"What happens is, of course, you're compared to everybody else in the world," Zanotelli said. "This one day is a reflection on supposedly everything we do all year long."
Well, yes. I see this sort of complaint often, and the erroneous assumption behind it is that, even in a good school, every single kid could have a bad testing day on the same day. Test scores do contain error, but that error goes in both directions, and chances are that on any one day, some kids will score worse than expected, and some kids better. A school that's doing a good job is, even with testing error, more likely to have a high mean than a school that's doing a poor job.
Like schools, parents pay attention to the tests.
"I think our parents here in Marshfield are very astute in the fact (that) reading is very important to schooling and lifetime employment," said Bernice Lansing, director of curriculum and instruction for Marshfield School District.
Wow. Not much gets by those Marshfield parents, does it?
Often parents will ask teachers and counselors how they can help their child prepare for testing.
"There's no way to really study for the test," said Debbie Stone, Greenwood guidance counselor and district assessment coordinator. "The information on the test is based on the curriculum (students have) already been taught."
Even so, students should get a full night of sleep and then eat a good breakfast in the morning the days of the exam, Stone said. Greenwood, and many other districts, are making sure students have a snack either before or just after the test to keep their energy levels up.
That's pretty good advice, and this scenario - an untimed test that results in public data but no sanctions - is a pretty good scenario for third-graders. Best to catch those problem readers early.
Posted by kswygert at March 8, 2004 09:51 AM