“Absolutely, the districts and the researchers think we need the data to know where the students are across the state,” said Professor Elizabeth Thorne Wallington of Missouri Western State University. “But at the same time, if it is being used to make teachers and students feel bad about something over which they have no control, then it can feel really punitive to them.”

Drawing on his long experience as a K-12 test research specialist at the Missouri Western Department of Education, Thorne Wallington explained how scores act like a double-edged sword and how it has been since courtesy of No Child Left. Behind the 2001 law.

“Because I’m in Missouri and I’m from Missouri, this is the state that I took a closer look at,” Thorne Wallington said. “And so, the standardized tests provide us with all the success data that we use in our statistical modeling. My interest is how we can change policies and change stakeholder views in using this data to better support students and teachers.

Missouri’s assessment program is based on the principles of this law and governed by federal regulations. As a result, the state had no choice but to conduct testing. Calls not to do so had no effect on a warrant issued by US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, appointed by President Joe Biden.

“This is not the year of a referendum on ratings, but I’m open to conversations about how to improve them,” Cardona said in March, amid his decision to require all states to quit. ‘They complete their regular exam programs on time.

St. Joseph’s Education Council member Kenneth Reeder reaffirmed this week that the decision to go ahead with MAP testing, regardless of the COVID-19 circumstances, should be viewed as undeniably correct. Better to know, Reeder argued, that you are in the desert and running out of water than to continue desperately chasing a mirage that would cover up how bad our neighborhood, like many others, is.

Educators, Reeder said, need to know as much as they can about the extent of this problem. If anything, more testing should take place.

“I just can’t imagine how someone who is involved in this profession, in education, would ever want it to be any other way,” he said.

For the Board of Education, there is an argument for responding to the negative MAP results by taking more control of the conversation about the curriculum. As he has already done, Reeder urged the district to immediately reschedule meetings of its academics committee, which has not met for months.

The district organized this to make room for Vision Forward, the name applied to the public engagement process that aims to involve hundreds of residents in large public meetings about the future of the district. Vision Forward is ultimately guided by Creative Entourage, a St. Louis consulting group. While the agenda for scheduled meetings, starting in January, has yet to be set, topics should include student performance and district facilities.

“The board needs to lead the class,” Reeder said. “Sure, let them do their creative entourage thing, they can talk about buildings for 18 months. We’re elected for a reason, and we’ve put that aside. “

Speaking about state policy rather than what local educators should do, Thorne Wallington said the test data potentially points the way to a better future. Great care is needed to ensure that students, staff and families feel supported throughout the process.

“For me, as a researcher, the data is really useful,” she said. “It can be said that students in ‘this district’ had more learning losses than students in ‘this district’. This gives us a baseline. But the biggest conversation is about how data has been used historically. We just went through what no one has ever experienced before, something totally different.