Oregon is in its first year of a new set of standardized tests. They're longer and more difficult than tests of the past.
Today we get a close-up look at one of the tests, from students who've already taken it.
The Language Arts Performance Task is like a research project under test conditions: three days of reading and writing. Seventh graders at H.B. Lee Middle School in the Reynolds School District remember it was hard, but it’s been a few weeks since they took it, and the details are fading.
“It was about this guy, I forget his name,”says Shai India Harris.
“I don’t know what his name was,” says Sairya Sims.
Shai and Sairya had similar tests. Trevor Vernon and Breann Miller had different ones.
“Mine was about people exploring Antarctica,” Trevor says.
“Like, was about some people living in England,” adds Breann
The test starts with a teacher offering instructions and vocabulary.
Shai says the terms were key: “It’s different words for words that we use in class, because we don’t use the same words kind of, that they use on the test.”
Breann says it felt like a half-hour social studies lesson: “We kind of went over like the Seven Wonders of the World before. And that kind of helped us for the test.”
The test took three, hour-long class periods. And that’s only one of the four “Smarter Balanced” tests students will take.
There are two math and two language arts exams for students from third through eighth grades, and in 11th grade. There’s multiple choice in math and language arts, and a performance task for each.
State officials say by now more than 6,000 students have finished the Language Arts Performance Task. Most are in sixth, seventh, or eighth grades.
H.B. Lee seventh grader Sairya Sims lays out what students see: “You have three articles on the same topic, but like, talking about different things. You read them, answer the questions, take notes, and move on, but you can’t go back. Once you move on, you can still look at your notes, but you have to write an essay, and there’s more instructions.”
Shai India Harris says students got a clue from their teacher beforehand. “Mr. McDermott said it was a better thing to read the questions and then read the article, so when we read the article, you know what you need to find”
Even with that clue, though, the readings were tough.
“So, like the first part — where you have to read? It felt long. I felt like I was reading forever,” Shai says, adding that the articles were also full of difficult terminology.
“So I had to read it over, and then over,” Shai says. “Because I didn’t get it. And when I finally did get it, it was like the second day. It started getting easier. Then on the third day, I just wanted to hurry up and go, but I couldn’t do that.”
Seventh grader Trevor Vernon says for him, it started hard.
“I definitely think that it was more difficult than it should’ve been,” Trevor says. “Then it kind of got easier, and then it got more difficult at the end.”
The essay assignment varied from student-to-student. Some had to write an argument, or an opinion. Breann Miller says she was assigned a narrative — a story.
“I feel like it was harder than the other tests, but when you got to writing the stories or taking notes and stuff, that really helped you make it easier,” Breann says. “It was more fun writing the stories than answering the questions.”
Trevor says he had to work hardest on the essay, and he thinks he did well, as a result. “I think I did better on the essay, even though it was the hardest question for me, because I spent the most time on it.”
The students wanted to see one more thing. Oregon’s old exam gave students their scores right away.
Syairah Sims misses that. “Yeah, I like seeing the score at the end.”
Scoring the written answers is expected to take weeks.
Copyright 2015 Oregon Public Radio
