COLUMBUS – Amid a backlash against standardized testing that has even the Obama administration backpedaling, this school year’s statewide testing in Ohio will be a more-relaxed, more-efficient experience than last year’s, welcome news to local educators who said the old system was confusing, glitchy and needlessly time-consuming.
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Ohio scrapped its exams in English and math just three-and-a-half months ago, but state education officials say the replacement tests are on schedule to be administered this school year.
Tests for every grade level and subject area — English, math, social studies and science — will be provided by AIR, or the American Institutes of Research, meaning one online platform for everything. School leaders say they like that.
They also like that the tests will be significantly shorter for students: between two to two-and-a-half hours shorter, depending on the grade level and subject matter. That’s a time reduction of 39 percent to 50 percent per test, according to the Ohio Department of Education.
The department released sample questions on Friday for the new third-grade English language arts test and for the high-school end-of-course exams, which will be taken in December. Officials hope to release samples for the rest of the new tests within a month.
The news comes as a study released Monday showed the typical student in the nation’s big-city public schools spends between 20 and 25 hours a school year taking standardized tests — and roughly 112 mandatory exams from preschool through high school.
Researchers who conducted the study for the Council of the Great City Schools analyzed actual test-taking time, so the figures don’t include hours devoted to prep ahead of testing required by the federal government, states or local districts.
The Obama administration declared Saturday that the push for more testing had gone too far and acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests. Specifically, the administration called for a cap on assessment so that no child would spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking tests.
The issue is the subject of a White House meeting Monday between President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.