State tests moved back

School districts will have more time to prepare students for this year’s state tests, but the schedule change caught some officials by surprise.

The English Language Arts exam will be given across New York state in grades 3 through 8 in late April, followed by the math exam in early May. In the past, the ELA has taken place in January and the math exam in March.

Linda Roth, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in District 13, said there was no official word that the test dates would be changed until after the 2008-09 school year ended. “They told us at a very late date that this would happen,” Roth said.

District 30 Superintendent Dr. Elaine Kanas, too, said she was surprised by the sudden change. “We didn’t expect that it would happen for the immediate year,” she said. “There had been some talk about changing the testing dates.” Kanas noted, however, that it does make more sense to test a year’s worth of material at the end of the school year.

She said that teachers and administrators spent much time over the summer revising curriculum guides, and added that it was fortunate that curriculum work in English Language Arts had been planned before the change was announced. Additionally, District 30 implemented its new math program this year, so that curriculum was being revised as well.

“It was good it came when it did,” Shaw Avenue School math teacher Joanne Lufrano said of the test changes. “We were already planning on working.”

Dr. Edward Fale, superintendent of District 24, said that lumping all the tests together will limit other educational opportunities during that period. At the same time, Fale said, he thinks the change in test dates will help balance the curriculum throughout the school year. He noted that in past years there was more of a focus on ELA before the January test, and then teachers began to stress math more in the two months before the math test.