Washington releases student scores from new Smarter Balanced tests

OLYMPIA – The raw numbers may look worse, but state school officials said the results should be seen as better from standardized tests that students in many grades of Washington public schools took last year.

“Learning for kids actually went up,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn said in announcing results for the new Smarter Balanced Assessment tests.

English language and math tests were administered in third through eighth grade, and again in 11th grade. Through eighth grade, more than half of students statewide got scores that showed they were ready to advance to the next level in English language and almost half got similar scores in math.

But that doesn’t mean the remaining students failed, Dorn said.

“Nobody passes or fails the Smarter Balanced test,” he said at a news conference releasing data. A score above a certain level shows the student is ready to go on to the next level; a lower score shows where a student needs help.

The head of the state’s school administrators association was quick to caution that the numbers were just a “snapshot” and should not be compared with previous scores, but be considered a “baseline” for comparisons in future years.

“This is a new exam, tied to new standards, and so it is difficult and inappropriate to draw comparisons based on students’ performance on previous state exams,” said Bill Keim, the association’s executive director.

Test scores are broken down by grade level for all of the state’s 295 districts, and for individual schools within those districts. Overall, scores were slightly lower than the state average for most grades for Spokane, East Valley and West Valley school districts, and higher for Mead and Central Valley school districts, although there are some exceptions for individual grades on specific tests.

The scores were significantly lower across the state for 11th-graders in both English and math. But those scores were affected by a high rate of students opting out because they’d taken the English language Smarter Balanced tests or math end of course exams as sophomores and already had adequate scores, state officials said. Some parents had their students excused from the tests because they felt that high school students already have enough tests between PSAT, SAT, ACT and Advanced Placement tests.

Some juniors who did take this year’s Smarter Balanced tests after doing well the previous year weren’t motivated and randomly selected answers, which is something the computer can detect, said Gil Mendoza, deputy superintendent for K-12 education. “We believe this was an anomaly,” he said.

Dorn said he’s working to get colleges to use an 11th-grade student’s results on the Smarter Balanced tests for placement in courses when they enter those institutions as freshmen, proving they don’t need remedial math and English courses.