So Long, CMT

New Haven is preparing to ditch the Connecticut Mastery Test for a new test — and now faces a technological challenge.

The school board has until the end of the week to let the state know if it plans to keep using the same standardized tests — the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) for grades 3 to 8 and Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) for sophomores — or get a head start rolling out a new one.

The new test, called the Smarter Balanced Field Test, is part of a movement taking hold across the country to align schools to new national standards called the Common Core. The Common Core specifies benchmarks each kid should be able to reach in English and math from K to 12. Connecticut is one of 45 states that have agreed to adopt the new standards. New Haven has already started changing the way teachers teach to fit the new guidelines.

The Common Core has ​“fewer standards, clearer standards and higher standards” than the current curriculum, said Superintendent Garth Harries.

Starting in the 2014 – 15 school year, every district in Connecticut will be required to switch to a new test that is supposed to measure whether kids are meeting the new standards. Schools will start using the Smarter Balanced tests in English and math for grades 3 to 8. The high school Smarter Balance tests will be given during junior year, not sophomore year. Smarter Balanced will replace the CMT and CAPT, high-stakes tests on which schools have been graded, ranked and apportioned federal and state grants according to the No Child Left Behind Act.

This year, the state is giving districts an option: Stick with the CMT and CAPT, or get a head start on taking the new tests.

“By Friday, we need to make a decision as to what we choose,” Assistant Superintendent Imma Canelli told the school board at Tuesday’s meeting at Career High School. 

The decision applies just to English and math. The new science standards have not yet been released, so the new science tests aren’t ready. So students in grades 5, 8 and 10 will continue taking the CMT and CAPT science tests this year and next.

Canelli said the district is moving forward with plans to adopt the new tests this year and stop using the CMT and CAPT. She outlined several factors the district weighed in its decision.

On the upside: Switching now gives teachers and students an extra year to get used to the tests, she said. And the district has already been preparing by adapting its curriculum to the Common Core.

On the downside: There’s a major technological challenge. While the CMT and CAPT required only pencil and paper, the new tests require computers. One computer for every test-taker.

School board member Alex Johnston (at right in photo with Major John DeStefano) asked how many hours each test will take per child.

Canelli said she has asked the state that question and she has not yet heard back. So schools can’t yet come up with a specific plan on how they will schedule all the kids to take the tests.

Johnston also noted a possible problem: Schools that don’t have many computers may have to stretch out the testing over six weeks. That wouldn’t be fair, he said, because some kids would have much more time to learn from their teachers before they take the tests.

The tech department is counting all the computers in every school and replacing outdated computers so that schools are equipped to administer the test, Canelli replied. She said a recent $11 million federal magnet grant will help bear that cost.

Superintendent Garth Harries said in his ​“listening tour” around town, he has heard a lot about inequity in technology between schools. He acknowledged the problem. ​“We’re going to have to wrestle with that regardless” of the new tests, he said.

Canelli also announced two drawbacks she gleaned from a recent conference call last week with Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor: Even though the tests are computerized, students and teachers will have to wait until the fall of 2014 to get the test results. And kids won’t be able to benefit from one of the advantages of computerized testing — that the computer can change the test to give kids harder or easier questions based on their previous responses. The tests won’t be able to do that this year, Canelli said.

Career High teacher Jen Drury, a vocal critic of standardized tests, balked at those announcements.

“In order to be meaningful, assessments need to be timely,” she said. ​“We didn’t get our CAPT scores until mid-August this year,” which put schools in a crunch to digest and respond to the results before the next school year. ​“Now we’re not going to get them until fall?”

“Just keep pushing our kids, pushing our kids, and we can’t tell them how they scored [for] six months?”

Students in other places, such as New York, have seen scores plummet when they switched to new Common Core-aligned tests. Drury said she feared that without ​“adaptive” testing, in which the computer adjusts its difficulty to each kid’s level, the experience would be even more emotionally taxing for kids.

“If it’s not adaptive, it’s going to be a really hard test for our children. They might feel defeated,” she said.

Board member Che Dawson noted another concern: Schools face a disparity not just in how many computers they have, but in how well kids know how to use them.

“Even if you got everyone a computer, they still aren’t used to using them,” he said.

Harries acknowledged the problem: ​“We need to really own that issue.” he said the observation is ​“accurate, both in the schools and elsewhere.”

Sue Weisselberg, the school system’s chief of wraparound services, said the test will require computer skills, such as using a keyboard and mouse, that many kids have not developed.

“People know how to text, but that’s not the same as keyboarding for a test,” she said. They ​“need to know how to drag and drop.” Canelli said schools will be training kids on computer skills, focusing on grades 2 to 5.

Marc Gonzalez (pictured at the top of this story), a 7th-grader at East Rock Magnet School, said his class took a pilot version of the Smarter Balanced test last year. He said the test included a ​“click and drag” section, where students had to click on answers, drag them across a screen, then ​“drop” them in a certain spot.

“Click ​‘n’ drag was definitely one of the harder parts of the test,” said Marc, who’s 12. He said students found the task frustrating because if they released the mouse too soon, they would ​“lose the answer,” and they had to go back and start dragging it again. The problem was mechanical, not academic, he said: ​“They have the answer, but they can’t get it there.”

Weisselberg said she will be rounding up not-for-profits and community groups to enlist them in training students in computer skills.

Schools IT director Kevin Moriarty said as he replaces old computers in schools, he is turning them over to a not-for-profit that will ​“take those old PCs, teach kids how to use them, teach kids how to fix them, and then give them to low-income families.” That should help bridge the digital divide, he said.

Harries noted that ​“teaching the computer skills is not a substitute to the underlying reading and math skills.”

And despite the technological challenges, he said, it makes sense to move forward with the new tests. ​“There aren’t many people who will mourn the CMT and the CAPT. I haven’t heard anyone say, ​‘Oh please, let them take the CMT or the CAPT.’”

The change in tests also throws a wrench in the city’s school reform effort, which laid out goals for how kids should score on the CMTs and CAPT over time. Those scores are a partial basis for a new way of grading teachers, principals, and schools. Teachers’ job evaluations are based in part on goals they set for their kids’ improvement on tests. Harries said that because of the upcoming switch in testing, the district has been suggesting other ways of measuring student improvement besides the CMT.

Harries said he plans to address the broader issue — of how New Haven will redefine its school change goals after abandoning a fundamental measure of its success — at a November board meeting.