Written By: Dylan Howdyshell, Reporter
This year, the typical high school Junior will have taken an average of four
common assessments each grading period for the first three grading periods of the year. Now that May is here again, it’s also peak SOL testing season, and adding SOLs for each subject during the last quarter brings the total to about 16 tests.
One teacher, who prefers to remain unnamed, disliked this aspect of the tests especially.
“The test days are four days of instruction that we lose,” said the teacher, about Common Assessments. “That’s about six hours of our total class time that we won’t get back.”
Teachers in each subject area use released SOL questions to develop the Common Assessments, which gauge the students’ knowledge of certain subject material.
When asked if the assessments were an effective means of testing the students’ knowledge of the subjects, she replied with a simple “No.”
“I feel there is no real correlation between the students’ scores on the assessments and their ultimate grades for the course.”
As assessments measure students’ progress, the SOLs are the standard for teaching material in Virginia schools. This teacher, who finds the SOLs more tolerable than the Common Assessments, expresses qualms only with the methods that the Standards are taught—that a bare minimum is the only necessity.
“For at least 70 percent of the students to pass is our goal,” said the teacher. “We have exceeded that goal, but we keep lowering the minimum passing test grade. What we should be doing is teaching on a higher level than the tests’ lowest passing mark. A standard is O.K., but throwing everything else out so as to only provide for the test’s minimal prerequisites is really the problem.”
Ms. Meredith Barber, the testing coordinator at WHS, feels that the Common Assessments and SOLs are both effective means of evaluating students’ knowledge in each subject area.
“The Common Assessments help to prepare students for the actual SOL tests. The students get practice with the types of questions that are on the SOLs. The computerized Assessments help to familiarize the students with the different tools they are provided with on the SOLs, like the compass and calculator.”
“Each subject has a blue-print, which is basically an outline of the material in each particular course. The Common Assessments can help teachers zero-in on the subjects that individual students are having problems with, and they can then reinforce the material to better prepare the students for the Spring SOLs,” Barber said.
Given these insights, and taking into consideration the fact that these tests are required by the state to ensure that, we as a school system, continue to receive much needed funding for public education purposes, I am of the opinion that the Assessments and SOLs are necessary evils — I have not particularly enjoyed them in the past, yet I understand their importance in upholding relatively high public education standards for the State of Virginia, and the United States as a whole.
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