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A group of about a dozen visitors to last week’s Soup with the Superintendent program, at Lindstrom’s Wildcat Community Center were reminded of when they were attending school and the dreaded pop quiz came from out of nowhere.  To be sure, no grades were riding on the outcome of this but there was obvious anxiety exhibited among lunch program attendees.  

The topic for this mid-day “soup’ program which is a monthly district outreach — was assessments.  Next month is athletics and activities.

So, why are certain tests required and what does the district do with the results.  

The public was granted access to the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments or MCA  outcomes recently released by the state — and these results were much of the focus.  

The pop quiz format was meant to give the visiting adults a feel for what’s being measured by Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.  The audience was asked to complete one test from the 1980’s and another modern format of the same test... both meant for grades 3 and 5.

Sarah Schmidt, ISD 2144  Director of Teaching and Learning, asked about the intentions apparent in the wording of the test questions, but years apart.  Audience members almost unanimously felt one test was more specific versus the other that called for inference skills by the test taker.

Testing not only depends on how the questions are presented but on what the test taker thinks is being measured, the audience was advised.  Many in the audience said they couldn’t figure out what some of the questions wanted.

Schmidt explained that the MCAs present some shortcomings with teachers because their results arrive months after the tests are administered.  It is hard to improve on a student’s learning when  the assessment is so delayed and teachers can only indirectly alter their approach to ensure how the lesson is absorbed.

Other testing used in Chisago Lakes that is more immediate and useful, including “Fast Bridge”  might be done as often as three times per year. 

Schmidt also said the district is close to implementing a test program offering language screening. The state Department of Education looks to get feedback from Chisago Lakes on its experience with the test designed to assess early verbal skills, shown to correlate to success in literacy.  Watch for information being sent soon to families with young students.

Superintendent Brian Dietz also noted that colleges have changed how the single stand alone testing is used, and many no longer require the ACT exam for entering post secondary education.  The ACT has been shown to neither predict what has been learned or the capacity to learn.

Still, in reality, monitoring and measuring is necessary and the MCA testing is required, 

In Minnesota the schools test subjects (math and reading) on skills that federal education officials determine should be tested.  The grade levels that are tested are also mandated. Reading is checked in grades 3-8 and 10 and math is grades 3-8 and 11.  There is an “opt out” for parents or guardians to act on behalf of a student, but selective testing  skews the results data.  Private pay school students are not required to take the MCA.

If reviewing the online Minnesota Department of Education “Report Cards” including MCA test results, the ‘soup’ program visitors were advised to consider the bigger picture.  

Look over multiple years of the MCA results.  

Give some credit to pupils who did not make the cut and were rated as “not proficient” or not meeting standards.  The cut-off can be one question.

Most test results summaries consider the “meets or exceeds expectations” categories, but  students who were just one wrong question away from the tally aren’t being utilized statistically, Schmidt added.

The MCA results do help teachers refine their approaches to teaching certain lessons and there is value in that.  Schmidt said staff development hours are when she can go over results and discuss with teachers what may or may not have been successful with that group of puils. And, districts displaying high results are often consulted on their approaches by other districts that consistently come in at the low end of measures. 

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