[V]ermont students still struggle with math proficiency, according to the results of the first round of a new standardized assessment exam.
The secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education on Monday released the scores from the first Smarter Balanced Assessment tests, the replacement for the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP).
The new test was created by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), of which Vermont is one of 16 governing member states, according to its website. The computerized tests in language arts and math are administered to students in Grades 3-8 and Grade 11.
“The scores were better than we had expected,” Michael Hock, director of educational assessment at the Agency of Education, said.
Hock said that the SBAC had conducted a projection of Vermont’s possible scores based on past scores with the NECAP and other tests, but Vermont students had surpassed the projected scores.
Vermont students scored 37 percent proficiency in math and 58 percent proficiency in English and language arts, the results show. Hock said that while this is a concern for the state, it tends to be a shared problem across the nation.
Hock said math proficiency levels are lower than expected because of new skill requirements.
As this was the first time that the SBAC was given to Vermont students, AOE Secretary Rebecca Holcombe said the results should not be compared to those from the NECAP or other standardized tests.
The Agency of Education stopped using the NECAP when it adopted the Common Core standards last year.
“NECAP was a pencil-paper test,” Hock said. “Smarter Balanced can be delivered by computer and includes all kinds of technology-enhanced questions.”
According to the release, parents of Vermont students might notice that fewer students scored as well on the SBAC test as they did on the NECAP, and this is a reflection not on the students’ intelligence or the quality of Vermont public education, but that the SBAC is more challenging.
Scores from the SBAC tests are supposed to reflect whether students are on track to be career- or college-ready by the time they graduate, Hock said. Some people have misinterpreted that as the test being designed to sort students into college-bound and noncollege-bound categories, he said.
“We want to dispel that notion as that is not the reasoning at all,” Hock said. “We want to think that any student can go to college if they want to and this test will help determine what skills they still need to master in terms of their educational experience.”
