As schools across Colorado are preparing for state standardized testing in March and April, most students in Mancos will likely not take part.
Mancos School District RE-6, and nine other rural Colorado districts are part of the Student Centered Accountability Project, which is working on an alternative to standardized state tests, Superintendent Brian Hanson said.
Instead of relying on the state’s Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test and Colorado Measures of Academic Success test, the project aims to develop a more holistic system, but still adhere to state standards.
The Colorado Board of Education granted the pilot project a year to help develop the system and five years to implement and refine it.
“The philosophy of standards is that everybody can be proficient,” Hanson said.
But the current system uses tests that students don’t care about, and it doesn’t contribute to academic development because the results are delayed for months, he said.
Hanson said he would like to see the schools judged on tests that teachers are already using and tests such as the ACT that are required for college.
In addition to testing, he would like to include the effectiveness of the teachers and leaders and how well teachers are preparing students for careers and the workforce, among other values.
The nine districts have agreed to meaningful learning, professional culture and resource allocation as the three areas that they would like to be judged.
The project recently put out the call for bids on managing the project and what it might cost to help develop the system of accountability and what data would be used as a baseline, Hanson said.
Once the project has received bids, it will work on applying for more funding.
The community seems to support the efforts to de-emphasize standardized results. About 96 percent of Mancos students opted out of the tests last year, and Hanson expects the same this year.
The school has done well on standardized tests in the past, with about 85.7 percent of the third-graders scoring proficient or advanced proficient in reading in 2014.
But they are not useful for teachers or students, Hanson said,
“Why do I want to give a test that takes away three months of instruction?” he asked.
When the project started, about 14 rural schools were interested, including Bayfield. But five districts dropped out because the administrations had other priorities, Hanson said.
The Bayfield School District needed to focus on developing curriculum, Superintendent Troy Zabel said.
However, he was interested in how the school was succeeding outside of standardized tests.
“We feel like there is a lot more to the picture,” he said.
But Bayfield still values the results of standardized testing and seeing how the district compares with other schools.