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Ticket Availability ... Ashland Independent Film Festival report: Documentary about building Russell Brand ... Tree-planting event at Ashland Creek Park will celebrate Arbor Week ... ASHLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT Bracing for Common Core New standardized test coming soon Comment By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted Apr. 3, 2015 at 8:23 PM By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted Apr. 3, 2015 at 8:23 PM What do you think? --> Have an opinion on this issue? Send a letter to the editor at www.dailytidings.com/sendletter. » Read more X What do you think? Have an opinion on this issue? Send a letter to the editor at www.dailytidings.com/sendletter . » Social News Students and parents anxious about the state of Oregon’s new Smarter Balanced test, which will hit Ashland in the coming weeks, have nothing to fear. So says Ashland High School Principal Michelle Zundel. Yes, the test — for students in grades three through eight and high school juniors — will require a deeper understanding of the curriculum than any previous standardized test. But the scores will not determine students’ grades or whether or not they advance to the next grade level. “The life of a child will not be changed based on the results of their Smarter Balanced score this year,” she said. “I don’t want people stressed out. They are caught in a transition while the adults who mandate education policy roll out new standards and practices. But we are going to make sure that our students are not negatively impacted by that.” Ashland High will conduct the test, which will be divided into short increments, the week of April 20-24. In October of 2010 Oregon became one of the first states to adopt the Common Core State Standards, which represent a departure from the Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or OAKS, standardized test. The standards were determined by “experts and teachers,” according to corestandards.org, and emphasize critical thinking and problem solving in order to better prepare students for both college and the work force. Now 43 states are on board with Common Core, and this spring marks Oregon’s first run through. How does the Smarter Balanced test differ from the OAKS? In general the Smarter Balanced tests, which will take about seven to 8 1/2 hours to complete depending on the student’s grade level, will demand a deeper understanding of the material, requiring more explanations, reasoning and showing of work. The test is actually divided into two separate tests, one for math and one for English language arts, and each of those also has two parts: a series of short-answer and multiple-choice questions and performance tasks, which will require students to apply their knowledge to a practical problem. On a third-grade practice test, one multiple-choice question states: “A pencil has a mass of 25 grams. An apple has a mass that is 75 grams more than the pencil. What is the mass of the apple, in grams?” A sample performance task also required addition skills to determine how many lemonade cups were sold at a lemonade stand, employing a bar graph. An 11th-grade practice language arts test requires the student to read a nine-paragraph story then select one of four sentences from the text that “best supports the conclusion that the clothing manufacturers have not been operating in an ecologically sustainable way.” An language arts sample performance task for the same grade level provides four articles the focus on financial literacy education then asks the students three questions. The first is: “Which source would most likely be relevant to students researching new approaches to increasing people’s financial literacy? Support your response with two details from the source. Justify your answer and support it with information from the source.” While the state will issue report cards showing each school’s scores, schools will not be rated based on how they stack up to other schools — at least not yet. Also, the results will not be used to evaluate teachers who teach math or reading until 2016. Zundel indicated that Ashland High’s teachers and students are up to the challenge. “Our belief is that strong test scores come from strong instruction,” she said. Results won’t be available until summer or early fall, but public support of the new standards is already waning. A PDK International and Gallup poll in 2014 found that 60 percent of those surveyed oppose the standards. In a similar poll conducted by Education Next, teachers’ opposition to Common Core tripled in one year to 40 percent in 2014. The anticipated low scores are part of the certainly part of the reason. Some states have even kicked off public relations campaigns aimed at preparing parents for what’s to come. “The standards are really high,” Zundel said. “The Common Core state standards raise the proverbial high jump bar significantly higher and I appreciate the idea of focusing on critical thinking in the writing components. “I believe that it is healthy for educational systems to be able to assess student learning. It makes sense for a nation to be able to show how students are performing across the country. I see education and our strategies for assessment to be improving and I don’t think that multiple choice tests have been an authentic measure of learning, so for those reasons I appreciate the efforts to improve our assessment techniques.” In an effort to ease parents’ concerns, Zundel said AHS held a Common Core question-and-answer session at the school in February, but only 10 people showed up. A similar meeting at Helman Elementary on Thursday drew 12. More may show up after the scores are released, but Zundel says it’s important to consider the big picture. “It is an exercise that will hopefully inform instruction and hopefully improve student learning over time,” she said. “But particularly because this is the first year they’re doing it (in Oregon) we have a responsibility to do our very best to make it as seamless for students as possible and not make it a huge stressor for either the students or the teachers.” Joe Zavala is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. Reach him at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted Apr. 3, 2015 at 8:23 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. calendar Connect with DailyTidings.com Facebook Twitter RSS Back to top Reader Services Reader Services home Subscriptions Subscriber controls Contact us Submissions Photos Events Letters to the editor Corrections Alerts Email alerts RSS feeds Text Alerts Advertise Media Kit Home Products and services Ad rates Advertising contacts Mail Tribune Daily Tidings The Nickel Shop Our Valley Blogs Stay Informed Email newsletter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Your privacy is important, read our privacy policy. © Copyright 2015 Local Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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