Despite opt-outs, test scores rise in Rockville Centre

Although Rockville Centre students opted out of the standardized state tests in record numbers in April, the percentage of students who passed them has, surprisingly, increased in most categories.

The results of the standardized English Language Arts and math exams, given to third through eighth-graders in April, were recently released. Protesting the exams, which are based on the controversial Common Core State Standards, many Rockville Centre parents joined the “opt out” movement and refused to have their children take them. The village has been a hotbed of the movement, and well over half of eligible students — 62 percent of the testable population — did not sit for the exams.

Despite — and perhaps because of — the record-low participation, students who took the tests surpassed the 2013-14 results in seven out of 11 tests administered. In some cases they even did better than in 2012-13, before the opt-out movement grew as big as it is.

“We find it very difficult to interpret [the results] and apply it to anything in the school district,” said Dr. William Johnson, the district’s superintendent. “There are still a lot of anomalous situations that are very hard to explain.”

Johnson said that teachers generally have a good sense of which students will do well on tests. The state exam results, however, are much less predictable, which has led district officials to question their value. “It’s difficult to predict how kids are going to do based on what we know is the reality in the classroom,” Johnson said. “They still haven’t established the validity of the state exam.”

In some schools, the results of the standardized tests are used to determine which students need extra help. Instead of the state exams, however, the Rockville Centre district uses the Northwest Evaluation Association test. It is administered in one day, takes about 45 minutes — in contrast to the multiple-day, multi-hour state exams — and the district gets the results days later. (The results of the state exams were released four months after students took them.) Students are assigned extra help based on their NWEA scores.

State tests also have no bearing on students’ grades or their progress. As a result, many parents feel that they are pointless, which has helped fuel the opt-out movement.

Only teachers, it turns out, are affected by the state tests. The scores are a factor in their Annual Professional Performance Review, part of which is based on how their students improve from year to year.

“Teacher scores will be tied to this test, which is going to create a whole other separate discussion when that information comes out [later this year],” Johnson said. “Because if the underlying data upon which the growth scores are built is flawed, then you have to assume the growth scores are also flawed. So I don’t know how to interpret that, either.”