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EDITORIAL: Let’s measure our kids’ learning losses

By No User February 3, 2021 | updated 5 years ago

Do Colorado’s school kids need a timeout from annual achievement tests amid COVID, as teachers unions and some district administrators contend? No. Just the opposite, in fact.

After nearly a year of being marooned on the uncharted island of remote learning, Colorado’s children need more than ever to take the springtime assessments known as the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS. It will yield precisely the kind of data needed by parents as well as educators and education-policy makers to figure out how deep and broad our kids’ learning deficits are after such an abrupt and prolonged shift from the classroom. You can’t address those lapses in learning unless you know what they are in the first place.

But don’t take our word for it. Heed John Johnson, a Colorado Springs school parent and member of the movement Transform Education Now. In a recent commentary published in The Gazette, he squared off against a school superintendent who proposed ditching the annual assessments. Johnson reminded the sooper just what was at stake.

“I have been talking with families across the state to hear about their experiences with remote learning. One thing that comes up again and again in those conversations is that parents want to know if and how their children have fallen behind on their academic goals during COVID-related school closures,” Johnson wrote. “They know it has been hard, but what they don’t know is how those difficulties have impacted their kids’ overall academic progress. They’re not experts, so they need the experts to help them understand and to create an educational plan with full transparency that will serve the entire student body with a focus on bridging the gaps.”

A key concern of administrators and other critics of a return to annual achievement testing is that the results could be used to rate the performance of teachers — who of course have been facing an extraordinary challenge statewide — or blackball entire schools for their lagging achievement. However, there is a consensus, which we support, that any results from the resumption of CMAS testing should not be used against schools or teachers in any way.

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Johnson says, “These parents across Colorado want to know how their students are doing not because they want to punish the school or their kids’ teachers, but so they can make sure they are advocating for what their kids need moving forward.”

And those parents overwhelmingly want testing to resume, according to a survey jointly commissioned by a bipartisan partnership of education-reform advocacy groups. The Keating Research poll, conducted Jan. 5-10 for Ready Colorado, Colorado Succeeds and Democrats for Education Reform, found an overwhelming two thirds of parents surveyed believe it is necessary to conduct a statewide assessment this spring to determine student learning loss. The poll found 62% of Colorado voters in general felt the same way; 25% were opposed.

Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, really. It’s the kind of common sense that occurs to parents. They don’t always have the answers, but they usually have the right instincts.

As Johnson put it, “When you have an issue with your car… you’re not an expert, so you take your car into the mechanic to find out specifically what the issue is so you can get it fixed. The same applies to our kids. We know something is off, but we’re not the educational experts, so we need help to understand what’s wrong so we can help ensure it gets fixed.”

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