Dive Brief:
- In New York state, district superintendents, principals, and charter school leaders have received a memo from state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia that calls for state tests to abandon the practice of being timed, alleviating pressure on students.
- Some, like Eva Moskowitz, founder of the embattled charter network Success Academy, say that the move is “ill-advised” and undermines the purpose of the assessment.
- New York’s move to kill the clock is unprecedented, and it’s unclear what the effect might be on student test performance.
Dive Insight:
In New York, state officials have flip-flopped over assessments and standardized testing, and this latest move only muddies an already-murky scenario.
In mid-December, the state’s Board of Regents officially postponed the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations for four years. That move stood in stark contrast to the state legislature's previous decision, which called for an increased focus on the use of test scores in measuring teacher efficacy.
And because the newly-passed Every Student Succeeds Act grants states much greater power over how they measure accountability, New York could theoretically abandon test-based teacher evaluations entirely. Similar moves in other states may also soon become commonplace.
Most recently, errors emerged in 1% of the test-based ratings given to New York teachers and principals, and scores for 40,000+ educators in the state will now be recalculated.
Research on the efficacy of timed tests versus those where students can proceed at their own pace is scarce, though the use of a stopwatch has been reported as controversial. Education Week previously noted that timed testing can lead to “math anxiety,” and a subsequent reduction in student achievement.
