East Meadow School District rejects field testing

The East Meadow Board of Education recently announced that students in third through eighth grades would no longer take the field tests that the creators of the State Education Department’s standardized assessments use to try out potential exam questions.

For the past four years, state officials have asked some schools to administer field tests in a variety of grades. East Meadow administrators noted that they had no control over which schools, grades and subjects were selected when they gave these tests to students in the past.

But the exams, on which children do not receive scores, will no longer be given in East Meadow’s elementary and middle schools. The board adopted this policy at its April 14 executive meeting and presented it to the public on April 21.

Board President Joseph Parisi explained that, in theory, field tests are designed to improve the quality of questions in the state assessment exams. But board members have seen no improvement in those questions, he said, adding that the field tests take away from instructional time.

“After four years of over-testing, it is time for common sense to prevail,” Parisi said. “Our district cannot participate in more testing and greater loss of teacher-student time with the objective of creating more questions for New York state assessments that have lost the support of parents and educational professionals.”

Parisi added that scores of East Meadow students opt out of the state assessments that the field test results inform, decreasing the validity of the program. During the test cycle that ended April 15, more than 50 percent of children refused to take the exams, doubling last year’s opt-out rate.

Alicia Piazza-Coffey, the creator of the East Meadow Opt Out page on Facebook, said that parents are pleased that district leaders have reviewed and adjusted their policies on state assessment refusals and field testing. This year, for the first time, students who did not take the exams participated in educational activities in rooms separate from test-takers.