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Detroit to scrap test for students
It received poor grades from staff and parents
by Chastity Pratt, Detroit Free Press, August 23, 2002
The Detroit Public Schools is scrapping a local assessment
test used to help determine whether some students are promoted
to the next grade, calling the test cumbersome and
ineffective.
The 2-year-old Essential Skills Attainment Test (ESAT) that is
administered in third, fifth and eighth grades is to be
replaced by a shorter test that is under development, said
Juanita Clay Chambers, associate superintendent for
curriculum.
The district developed ESAT to help teachers determine how
students are progressing in reading, math, science and social
studies.
Students who scored poorly on the test and earned a grade
lower than C in reading, math, social studies or science were
assigned mandatory summer school. The students had to show
improvement in the class and pass the ESAT at the end of
summer school to be promoted.
Chambers said that when she announced the end of the test at a
recent training session, teachers cheered before she could
finish her sentence.
"Teachers were telling us it was too long, it was just too
much," Chambers said.
After the 2000-01 school year, 4,421 students were held back
after mandatory summer school while 17,276 were promoted.
School officials did not return calls requesting 2001-02
school year totals.
The end of the test means the district also is redeveloping
its promotion policy, Chambers said.
The new policy will incorporate quarterly tests in reading and
math that should take about an hour each to administer, she
said. The promotion policy will take into account scores on
the new quarterly exams and other factors before a student is
sent to mandatory summer school, Chambers said.
At Wednesday's school board meeting, board member Marvis
Cofield said parents were baffled because well-performing
students often ended up in mandatory summer school because of
poor ESAT scores.
"So now we won't have a student with a 3.0" grade point
average "in summer school because they didn't pass a test?"
Cofield asked.
"It shouldn't happen," Chambers said.
Earlier this year, when the district rolled out its school
improvement plan, officials told the community the district
wanted to expand the ESAT to grades one through 11.
Some principals, however, opposed expanding the test.
In a report titled "Redesigning Schools," released in May,
principals who were polled about school improvement strategies
blasted the ESAT saying materials contained typos and the
results arrived too late in the school year to be useful.
Jeanetta Cotman, a fifth-grade teacher at Parker Elementary,
said a shorter, quarterly assessment sounds like a better
system.
"I like that idea," she said. "With the ESAT, it seemed like
we never had time to teach how we wanted to because of all the
testing we had to prepare for."
Contact CHASTITY PRATT at 313-223-4537 or
pratt@freepress.com.
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