AUGUSTA — Maine education officials on Friday released a one-time look at how students performed on new, tougher standardized tests, but since the state is dropping the test, the data can’t be used to show improvement or declines in student learning.

Rachelle Tome, acting deputy commissioner of the state Department of Education, said the department was encouraging students and parents to compare their results on the Smarter Balanced test to the state average or district average to get a sense of how students did.

“We believe this is a good learning year,” Tome said at a press event Friday at the department’s offices. Tome said the DOE had not yet had a chance to analyze the data and could not draw any conclusions.

“Schools should take a look at the data locally,” she said. “We want this to be a learning experience for everyone.”

The results from the Smarter Balanced test, which is aligned with Common Core learning standards, found that 36 percent of Maine students are considered proficient in math and 48 percent in English.

The expectation when the test was administered was that the results would be a baseline score for future comparisons, but direct comparison will be difficult since the test has been dropped. Officials said any future test will still be based on Common Core standards. The Smarter Balanced test was dropped in Maine after educators and parents argued that the test was flawed and difficult to administer and take.

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Tome noted that students were not only taking a tougher test, they were taking it on a computer for the first time.

“For some students that represented a great change,” Tome said.

Parents will get letters showing their child’s score, along with those from the school, the district and the state, Tome said.

Previously, elementary and middle school students took the New England Common Assessment Program. Juniors took the SAT as their state assessment test.

Educators have been warning parents and students to expect a drop in scores, based on other states’ experiences. In Kentucky, the first state to administer Common Core-based tests, there was a 30 percent to 40 percent drop in reading and math proficiency, according to results released in late 2012.

Portland’s education officials said they identified some trends in the data.

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English scores in elementary and middle school were consistent with earlier results, said Chief Academic Officer Becky Foley.

“In math, there is noticeable improvement, with district scores trending up when compared to current and previous state averages,” she said. The district didn’t analyze high school results because of the low participation rate – only 54 percent of Portland juniors took it.

The Common Core standards spell out exactly what students in each grade level are expected to know, such as the coordinate system in fifth-grade math.

“We’ve said all along it’s supposed to be more rigorous,” said acting Maine Education Commissioner Tom Desjardin. “The standards are supposed to be tougher.”

According to the results, proficiency scores in English remained fairly steady across grades, from 46 percent for sixth graders to 51 percent in fifth grades. Math scores showed a steady decline, with third-graders showing 45 percent proficiency, to a low of 25 percent for high school juniors.

Individual school results are available on the Department of Education’s website.

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A large number of students did not take the test, in part because of an opt-out movement that swept the nation during anti-Common Core protests last year. About 30 percent of juniors statewide didn’t take the test, compared to only about 5 percent of elementary and middle schools.

Participation rates were particularly low at some of the state’s top-ranked high schools. The Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone only had 51 percent of its students take the math test. Yarmouth High school had 8 percent, Cape Elizabeth had 30 percent and Greely had 19 percent. Low participation at top schools, Desjardin noted, may have pulled down the statewide average scores.

Yarmouth Superintendent Andrew Dolloff said most of the juniors there focused on SATs, Advanced Placement exams, ACT and other tests.

“With so many students participating in assessments that are important to them individually, it seems senseless to them, and to their parents, that they are being asked to participate in yet another assessment that detracts from the instructional day and has no bearing on their future,” he said.

Some of the state’s largest schools also had low participation rates: Portland High School (215 students) had 54 percent participation, Lewiston High School (299 students) had 11 percent take the test, and Camden-Rockport Middle School had fewer than half of its 382 students take the test.

“I think the computer test was a challenge for everybody this year, a challenge to get it right,” said Lois Kilby-Chesley, president of the Maine Education Association. The results released Friday are “not comparable to anything. It basically was just a wash.”

Dropping the test has thrown other education initiatives into hiatus, such as the decision to not issue A-F report cards for schools until there are two years of results from the same test.

The state put out a request for proposals this week for a new state assessment test that would be administered in the spring.


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