Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit
The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) added information in the opt out form packet that states that if a student doesn’t take the Smarter Balanced Exam (SBAC), then valuable learning information will be lost. What is this valuable information? How would this information be used to guide instruction?
Last year, I was called into a full-day meeting to go over the first year’s SBAC results with the intent of looking at what areas of instruction we needed to focus on. At the end of the day and after contact with ODE experts, we were unable to get one piece of information about which areas we would need to put extra time in for instruction. We were told that we would have to give additional formative assessments to get that information. So what were we told is the purpose of the test? Accountability.
When the projected cut scores were first released they showed that English Language Learners (ELL) students, had a projected rate pass rate of 5% or less in some of the grades, I filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. My complaint was rejected because they said that since most everyone would be failing, then I couldn’t prove discrimination against any protected class, such as ELL or Special Education students.
You don’t need to be an expert in data or statistics to come to the conclusion that this test is not valid. It does not give teachers the information they need to determine how to better make students college and career ready. The results don’t Oregon Save Our Schools: Smarter Balanced Fails to Show Any Merit:
