Student Testing In NJ: Too Much Or Not Enough?

NEW JERSEY — Less than a week after New Jersey students returned to school in September, they were sitting in front of computers, taking a standardized test.

The Start Strong assessment — the most recent addition to standardized testing in New Jersey — was created in the wake of 18 months of disruption from the coronavirus pandemic, to try to determine how far behind students had fallen in their education.

The test has drawn criticism from some corners, in part because it is another layer of standardized testing on top of multiple district-level assessments given to students throughout the school year in New Jersey.

From Start Strong in the fall to the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment in the spring to district-level assessments, school districts have standardized testing scheduled for some of their students nearly every month of the school year. It is particularly intensive in high school, where students are taking the PSAT, various college entrance tests, and have been subject to passing a graduation test for decades.

“We run way more tests in the high school than is federally required,” said Julie Borst of Save Our Schools NJ, which is fighting for a reduction in New Jersey’s standardized testing, particularly the graduation test.

The federal government requires yearly statewide assessments in reading/language arts and math for all students in third through eighth grades and once in high school, and statewide assessments in science at least once in each of grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12, under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Save Our Schools NJ has been fighting what it views as excessive standardized testing for years, saying it “does not improve children’s educational outcomes” and it “negatively impacts students’ long-term learning, motivation, and stress levels.”

Borst and the organization also say the repetitive testing, including the new Start Strong assessment, consumes time that would be better spent teaching students.

In the 180-day school year, districts spend at least three full weeks — nearly 10 percent of the school year — administering testing.

That not only involves the actual test-taking but includes the need for other classes to be quiet to while the tests are conducted. It frequently means limits on other instruction as in many districts, the wireless infrastructure cannot handle the load of testing and other simultaneous uses of Chromebooks, such as iReady math instruction or reading programs.

Here are the state-mandated assessments:

Start Strong: in English language arts for fourth through 10th graders, in math for fourth through eighth grades plus students taking Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II, and science for sixth, ninth and 12th graders.

New Jersey Student Learning Assessment in the fall: given to ninth graders in English along with Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II.

The New Jersey Student Learning Assessments in the spring: In English language arts for grades 3 to 9, math in grades 3 to 9 and science in grades 5, 8 and 10, according to the state Department of Education’s standardized testing schedule. The NJSLA is the testing conducted to meet the federal assessment mandate.

Eleventh graders take the NJ Graduation Proficiency Assessment in March, and must pass it to receive their high school diploma starting with the class of 2024, or gain approval to graduate by passing another assessment, such as the SAT, the ACT, or through a portfolio approval.

There also are several smaller state-mandated assessments for students who have disabilities, students for whom English is not a second language.

The state testing, usually weeklong windows, does not include testing preparation that happens in the run-up to the test, which consumes additional instructional time.

“Because they are high-stakes we spend a lot of time in schools preparing to take tests, time that could be used to teach students real things,” said Francine Pfeffer, associate director of government relations for the NJEA, said in June during testimony before the Senate Education Committee on a bill to revise the state's graduation test, which has been a flashpoint for years.

The testing conducted isn't simply about state mandates, however. School districts administer a variety of assessments, as many as four times per year, to gauge how a student is progressing in English or math or science, consuming nearly another week’s worth of class time.

In the Brick Township Schools, for example, there are Link-It benchmark assessments three times a year in first through eighth grades, and four — two per semester — for high school students, according to the 2021-22 testing schedule.

In the Newark Public Schools, there are three MAP Growth assessments per year, to see how students are faring and where they need more help.

District-level assessments allow teachers to get feedback immediately and see where students are struggling and where they are mastering the material. State assessments, however, lag significantly between then they are administered and when districts receive the information, which slows the district response to data showing problem areas.

The Spring 2022 NJSLA results were distributed to districts in September, after the school year and the Start Strong assessments were underway.

In the case of the Start Strong assessment, it has been criticized because its only determination is that students need help; there is no measure it provides saying students are at or above grade level.

All of those assessments come in addition to midterms or final exams in high school and the multitude of class-level tests students take to show their understanding of course material.

The extent of the testing is counterproductive, said Christopher Tienken, an associate professor at Seton Hall who has researched the effectiveness of standardized testing and its use in decision making about students and schools.

Tienken says the state’s testing for graduation — which has its roots in a 1960 state law requiring every student to pass a graduation test — is problematic, because the test questions skew toward suburban experiences.

While the test years ago measured basic skills, the current testing focuses heavily on ensuring all students are prepared for college.

“(The tests) are measuring more of what you bring to school than what you learn at school,” Tienken said. The questions are “contextual, based on life experiences. If you don’t have similar life experiences, you won’t understand the question as easily.”

As a result, he said, experts can predict with some level of accuracy the percentage of students from a particular school or area who will score proficient or above, using demographic information from the census, such as the percentage of people who have bachelor’s degrees in an area, the percentage of households with income below $35,000 and above $200,000, and the like.

For a lot of the standardized tests, “the language, examples, and types of situations they present are aligned very strongly to a white middle-class lifestyle,” and students who have not experienced that life may not understand the examples as easily, he said.

In addition, the tests simply do not have the depth needed to truly assess whether a student has learned a particular skill, Tienken said.

“To diagnose student learning related to inferential comprehension, there would need to be about 20-25 questions related to that specific skill. The tests do not have enough questions to diagnose student achievement at the individual level in any of the tested skills or standards,” Tienken said.

The amount of the state’s standardized testing creates stress on students and teachers, critics say, because of the importance the state places on them.

Teresa Ruiz, majority leader of the New Jersey Senate and a vocal advocate for the state’s various tests, insists they are a critical component of maintaining the state’s rating as having among the best schools in the country.

“I do firmly believe assessments are important,” Ruiz said in the June hearing. “You need that data not to penalize (districts), not to create stress, not to be punitive, but to have a measure that’s not based on opinion … so we can be sure that when a child graduates, they don't fall in the category of 70 percent of New Jersey graduates who need remediation in college.”