Amid flu worries, students will take state exams early
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By GAYLE WORLAND
Lee Newspapers
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 9:57 AM CDT
MADISON — Madison students will begin taking state academic tests several weeks earlier than usual this fall over fear that an onset of swine flu could cause widespread absences during the testing period.
The Madison School District is pushing principals to start handing out the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, or WKCE, after state officials asked educators to speed up the timetable, said district spokesman Joe Quick.
“The superintendent’s management team has strongly encouraged our schools to test as soon as possible,” Quick said. “I think individual principals know what that means.“
The state’s official testing window for the WKCE is Oct. 26 to Nov. 27. But the state Department of Public Instruction is also allowing schools to administer the exams as soon as test materials arrive, which could be as early as Oct. 9.
“This isn’t based on any data that we have that there are a lot of students who are going to be sick,” said Patrick Gasper, a spokesman for the Department of Public Instruction. “It’s just giving (districts) an option to increase the testing window so they can make accommodations should that arise.“
The mandatory state tests, for students in grades three through eight and grade 10, are used as a key tool for rating schools and satisfying requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Allowing schools to offer the WKCE earlier this year will give students who are absent with the flu a chance to make up tests before the completed booklets are due back with the state on Dec. 7, Gasper said.
The exams are extensive — eighth-graders have nearly seven hours of them in reading, math, science, language arts and writing, for example — and often are spread over several mornings, when students are freshest.
That’s the case at Cherokee Middle School, where sixth-graders will take the state tests Oct. 12 to 15 and seventh-graders will take it Oct. 26 to 28. Testing for eighth-graders will be spread out over three mornings and two afternoons from Oct. 19 to 23.
“Usually we test in early November, and we always have to leave time for make-ups anyway. Now we’ll have the entire month of November to do make-ups,” said Cherokee learning coordinator Jeff Horney, who personally administers WKCE make-up tests. “We’re not usually allowed to start so early.“
But not every district is jumping at DPI’s offer.
Stoughton plans to limit tests to the official testing period. So does Sun Prairie, said assessment and accountability program manager Kris Mueller.
“We want to give students the maximum instructional time in the classroom” before they take the state tests, she said.
Likewise, Verona schools “will not extend the testing window unless there’s an outbreak of (swine flu) after the test books arrive,” said Linda Christensen, director of instruction.
Schools in the Middleton-Cross Plains district are still finalizing their test dates, which could start as early as Oct. 19, said spokeswoman Michelle Larson.
Middleton High School sophomores will have a partial day of testing Nov. 5 and a full day Nov. 12 — but all that could change if there’s “a dramatic increase in absences,” she said.
About 430,000 Wisconsin students took state tests or the state’s alternate test for students with disabilities last year, said Gasper. Test results are not publicly available until spring — a delay that, along with other weaknesses in the testing system, prompted state school Superintendent Tony Evers to promise an overhaul of the test by as early as 2011.
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