Thomas Breen photo
Board of Education members Joe Rodriguez and Ed Joyner.
The Board of Education sent back to committee a proposed test prep contract after questioning the merits of subjecting all eighth and ninth graders to too many standardized tests.
The contract in question is a proposed $38,456 agreement between the Board of Education and the College Board to provide Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) 8/9 tests for all eighth and ninth-grade students and PSAT National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (NMSQT) tests for all 10th graders.
The College Board, a New York City-based national nonprofit, rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars every year designing and administering SAT tests, Advanced Placement exams, and other standardized tests geared towards college preparedness.
Monday night’s Board of Education meeting.
New Haven’s ed board unanimously voted at Monday night’s full board meeting at Celentano School at 400 Canner St. to send the proposed contract back to the Teaching and Learning Committee for further review after board member Ed Joyner and NHPS Advocates leader Sarah Miller spoke out in opposition to the testing service.
“Having eighth graders take the PSAT is educational malpractice,” Joyner said, echoing sentiments expressed by Miller and eighth grade history teacher Kirsten Hopes-McFadden earlier in the meeting.
Their argument, as laid out in an email statement put together by NHPS Advocates in advance of the meeting, is that eighth and ninth-grade New Haven public school students are hurt more than they are helped by being forced to take this college preparedness exam at the end of middle school or at the beginning of high school.
This contract has nothing to do with the regular PSATs, Miller and Hopes McFadden stressed. Those tests are typically taken by 10th grade students to help prepare them for the SATs in 11th grade.
Rather, they said, these pre-PSATs are simply a waste of time for teachers and students and a waste of money for the board as they reinforce.
“A growing number of educators consider the PSAT developmentally inappropriate in 8th and 9th grade,” Miller said, reading from the NHPS Advocates’ prepared statement. “It tests concepts that students have not learned, resulting in demoralizing low scores and unnecessary feelings of defeat and failure among our kids.”
NHPS Advocates’ Sarah Miller.
She cited a Connecticut Department of Education study of the PSAT 8/9 that recommends that school systems use different, more focused testing methods to gauge students’ mastery of a particular topic. “If educators desire greater information about a student’s knowledge in a particular skill or topic area,” that report reads, ” … then it may be more useful to administer a block of test items in that skill or topic area, instead of administering another measure of overall achievement like the PSAT 8/9… utilizing the Smarter Balanced results can lessen the need for additional assessments at the start of high school, thus reducing testing time while increasing instructional time.”
Miller said that, while the board’s Finance and Operations Committee argued that city students should have the same opportunity to take this test as students in the suburbs, few of New Haven’s surrounding towns administer the PSAT to eighth and ninth graders. Some of those suburbs that don’t buy into the pre-PSATs, she said, include Amity, Cheshire, Madison, North Branford, West Haven, Milford, Hamden, East Haven, Branford, and Shelton.
“These tests are developmentally inappropriate,” she said and NHPS Adocates wrote. “Do not inform instruction; do not achieve parity with suburban students who don’t even take the tests at such a young age; do not lead to improved scores; and could be administered for free. This strikes us as yet another reason why we need new district leadership, beginning with a new superintendent, with a demonstrated track record of placing student needs at the center of decision making.
Hopes-McFadden, who teaches eighth grade history at Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS), said she sees first hand how little the PSAT 8/9 do for her students and for her classroom. “It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s a wasted day.”
Joyner, in his argument to table the contract, agreed. “Having those kids take that test and be given a score back,” he said, “it defeats them.” He said the PSAT 8/9 would only be worthwhile if the school system were to adjust its entire curriculum for eighth and ninth graders in the direction of the subjects tested, such as math, writing, and critical reasoning. Otherwise, local students simply are not prepared, and taking the tests generates “a sense of helplessness.”
Board of Education President Darnell Goldson said he needs to know more about the test, and supported Joyner’s motion to send the proposed contract back to committee.
Michele Sherban, the school system’s supervisor for research, assessment, and student information, said delaying the contract vote until the next meeting shouldn’t affect the timeline for the schools’ planned administering of the tests, if the contract is approved. Ninth graders typically take the test in October, she said, while eighth graders typically take it in December.