'There's something wrong with the system'

Some educators in Kootenai County’s largest school districts feel defeated by the Idaho Standards Achievement Tests.

They teach Idaho standards and watch test scores stay the same, even as students' breadth of knowledge seems to grow.

“The ISAT is not an accurate reflection of what students in Idaho know and are able to do,” Post Falls District Superintendent Dena Naccarato said. “Further, the data is not specific enough to be useful to teachers in guiding instructional practice. We rely on other assessments to measure growth and make adjustments for students who need additional practice, enrichment, and/or support.”

The results often leave teachers, students, principals and the superintendents feeling lost, Lakeland School District Superintendent Lisa Arnold said.

“The ISAT assessment takes an exorbitant amount of time,” Naccarato said. “Approximately six- to six-and-a-half hours for the ELA and math tests. Research indicates having a student sit for three hours taking a test is developmentally inappropriate.”

The ISAT proficiency rate in Idaho is 42.7% for all grades in math, and 41.4% in science, according to data from the Department of Education.

The proficiency targets are all over 60%.

“If I am a principal in a building and 50% of all of my kids are failing — and it doesn’t matter what grade level — that’s not a teacher issue, it's not a kid issue,” Lakeland Superintendent Arnold said. “We have an alignment issue. We have a curriculum issue. So I started asking the question, ‘Why is the state not looking at this data and saying there’s something with this test that’s not working?’”

Arnold has been asking the Idaho Department of Education for support, or to align the test to the standards.

“The ISAT is designed to assess a student’s proficiency around the Idaho Content Standards in a way that complies with the Every Student Succeeds Act,” said Maggie Reynolds, the public information officer for the Idaho State Department of Education. “The assessment is reviewed on a periodic basis to ensure the ISAT assesses Idaho standards.”

But students in Idaho don’t meet those standards. The test results have been below the target for years, Arnold said. Nearly a decade ago, Idaho overhauled the testing and curriculum standards from No Child Left Behind to align with the Every Student Succeeds Act around 2015.

“We’ve never as a state been more than 50% proficient at any grade level,” Arnold said. “No district was shining. We’re in 2023, and as a state, we’re still 50% proficient in math. Nothing has changed in over 10 years. And It’s not because we have bad teachers and it’s not because our kids aren’t trying hard. There’s something with the test that’s not working.”

The state offers tools like practice tests or interim assessment blocks to raise test scores, but the practice tests are as intensive as the ISATs and use up class time.

“What the state has always told us is to use the interim assessment block, which we have done in Lakeland for years and years since we started this new ISAT," Arnold said. "And it never helped us do better on the test.”

The interim assessment blocks are smaller practice tests at depth of knowledge levels one and two, Arnold said. But the ISATs are depth of knowledge levels three and four, so the block and final tests don’t match.

“Our kids go into the testing lab feeling really confident because they just did all this practice and did really well on the interim assessment block,” Arnold said. “And they come out of the lab crying and feeling like they didn’t know what the heck they were doing in there.”

Some schools in other districts have seen success with the practice tests.

Idaho State Chief Deputy Superintendent Ryan Cantrell points to the Cascade School District with 215 kids as a success story. The district went from underperforming on the ISAT to being in the top 10 districts statewide in 2022.

“I would argue that in order to do well on those tests you really have to understand what they're asking and understand the questions,” Cascade Superintendent Joni Stevenson said. “My teachers felt like they were dragging their students through the mud, but we stuck at it for three years, and we’re starting to see progress. The language is a really important piece of that test.”

Stevenson’s District added an intervention math class where students take practice tests, but they’re as time-intensive as the ISAT, which can take over six hours.

“It’s so much instructional time lost so nobody uses it,” Arnold said. “Well Cascade is using it and what they’re doing is pulling a question from that test, and during intervention time teaching kids how to attack the question, solve the problem, how to use the technology. They’re teaching the kids to take the test. That’s not good teaching, and that’s a waste of instructional time. But that’s what it takes to pass the test.”

Each district can choose its curriculum to teach the Idaho Content Standards, and the Idaho standards are supposed to be reflected on the test.

“The ISAT is designed to assess a student’s proficiency around the Idaho Content Standards in a way that complies with ESSA,” Reynolds said. “The assessment is reviewed on a periodic basis to ensure the ISAT assesses Idaho standards.”

Local districts have some standout schools that have scored well on the tests.

From the Coeur d’Alene School District, Hayden Meadows Elementary scored 74.5% in math, and Dalton Elementary scored 69.3%.

From the Post Falls District, Greensferry Elementary scored well in math at 65.8% and science at 67.9%.

Many campuses and districts score well in English Language Arts.

Conversely, Lake City and Post Falls high schools had 30% of students score proficient or above in math, and Lakeland Junior School had 35%.

“In my world, if we do a good job of teaching to the standards if the test is really aligned to the standards, it shouldn’t matter what test we give the kids,” Arnold said. “They should be able to perform on it.”

The districts can go out to bid for different tests every five years, but other tests won’t likely be very different if they meet federal standards. In order to receive federal funding, 95% of the state and district students have to take the ISATs, which have to meet federal standards.

There are no standards for proficiency to receive funding.

“Each assessment is reassessed at the end of its contractual lifecycle,” Reynolds said. “The envisioning contract for the ISAT is nearing the end of its contractual lifecycle and will be reviewed accordingly.” She later added, "Since Idaho is a local control state, districts are free to choose the curriculum they use to teach Idaho standards. Districts are also free to design how they crosswalk how the ISAT assesses student knowledge (the way in which it asks the question) with how their educators are teaching the Idaho Content Standards.”

In 2019, Arnold was working with the State’s former director of communications for education, Karlynn Laraway. They planned a conference of teachers from across the state to review the test in 2020, but then COVID-19 broke out across the nation and those conferences were postponed indefinitely.

Now Arnold is reinitiating conversations to review the questions with Idaho Chief Deputy Superintendent Cantrell in an effort to get her students on track.

“What I don’t understand is why as a state we’ve been OK for over a decade with fewer than 50% of our kids showing mastery on a test,” Arnold said. “There’s something wrong with the system. And that’s the measuring stick that our teachers are being measured against.”