Parents of Pine View School students have approached the Sarasota County School Board to demand that their children’s tests and assessments be sent home so the parents can review them with the children.
The current practice at Pine View, Sarasota’s premier school for gifted students, is to keep the students’ tests and assessments in-house from the fifth grade onwards. If parents wish to review the material, they have to make appointments with the teachers and do the reviews at the school.
Pine View parents say this is not a viable solution. First, they note, in most households, both parents work; second, as Pine View draws students from the whole county, some parents have to travel long distances to go to the school to see the assessments and tests.
The school’s stance reportedly is that sending assessments home will lead to the tests losing integrity and create the potential for academic dishonesty among students.
Pine View Principal Steve Largo did not respond to the Pelican Press’ request for an interview.
Presenting their case before the school board last month, parents said Pine View’s stand was contradictory to the board’s own rule 9.101 (School-Community Relations and Interlocal Agreements-Parent/Family involvement), which reads, "Schools shall establish programs and practices that enhance parent involvement and reflect the specific needs of students and their families."
"All that we want to do is help our children," said Sue Memminger, a Pine View parent, "which is not possible, with the assessments not coming home."
At Pine View, parents said, teachers return tests to students in the classroom for review. The teachers are also ready to go over a test if any student requests that. "But in middle school, most students don’t want to do that. They do not want to draw attention to themselves or let their peers know that they have a problem with a test," said Rosemary York, the parent of a Pine View seventh-grader, who approached the school board for direction.
The parents say they feel their children should be able to review tests in the private and non-threatening atmosphere of their homes, away from the prying eyes of their peers.
"By the time the children return home and we discuss the tests, they have already forgotten the questions and their answers and what the teacher had explained to them," said Vidisha Patel, whose two children attend Pine View. "Only if parents are able to review the tests with the children can we understand and discuss with them how probably they may have misunderstood a question and how [the questions] should have been answered."
The parents are quick to add that their interest is not in critiquing the tests but in helping the students.
Though the school staff has offered to set aside time for parents of individual students to meet with the teachers and review the tests, the parents ask how practical that is. "A time when the student, the parent and the teacher are all free is nearly impossible to find," York said. "Unless we routinely review at home what they did in the tests, we cannot find out the pattern of our own children’s erroneous thinking or answering questions."
PARENT RESEARCH
What in normal circumstances would have involved a simple decision between a parent and a teacher has taken on a different dimension at Pine View, parents say.
During the Sept. 25 meeting of the Shared Decision-Making Team at Pine View – a body consisting of parents, teachers, students and members of the administration – parents put forward their case for sending tests home. The teachers present reportedly opposed the idea, saying it would lead to academic dishonesty.
"That’s when we realized they are re-using the same test year after year," York said. "The teachers got up and said it took several hours to set up a test."
York added, "The county has spent a lot of time and money improving technology. Why can’t they form more tests?"
However, at that September meeting, a decision was made to set up a committee of parents and teachers to study the issue. Parents told the Pelican they researched school board policies, best practices, academic honesty and authentic assessment measures. "At the second meeting, we presented our data and asked them for theirs. They had nothing. And our collaboration ceased," said Memminger.
The next day, Assistant Principal Tricia L. Allen did reportedly tell the parents the committee’s next step would be to create a "Zoomerang" survey to obtain current data from students regarding the prevalence of cheating, add a section to the faculty handbook requiring that teachers have a test review policy for their classes and work with the teachers’ committee to create a Best Practices Guideline for Assessment review, discuss the school’s academic honesty policy and also research how other schools similar to Pine View handle the return of assessments.
In 2007, U.S. News and World Report ranked Pine View sixth in the nation among Gold Medal schools, based on students’ AP test scores and college preparedness. York told the Pelican the parents contacted the five other schools ranked ahead of Pine View and found out that four of them sent their assessments home.
Other high schools in Sarasota also send their tests home, she added.
Further, the parents looked into academic dishonesty at Pine View and said they did not find instances of cheating. "There has never been an expulsion," said Patel. "The most serious offense a few years ago was when students hacked into a school computer and changed the grades there."
The parents and students at Pine View already sign an honor code, and they are willing to abide by the decisions of an honor council, if one were to be set up, to deal with academic dishonesty, parents said.
"There are several solutions to maintain the integrity of the tests," Patel pointed out. "They can pull the questions from a test bank. There are several teachers teaching the same subject and they can share the tests. Our interest is not in increasing the burden of the teachers, but merely helping our children. And there are several teachers at Pine View who do not have a problem sending the tests home."
The curriculum accorded the gifted endorsement in Sarasota County instructs teachers to review required subjects and re-evaluate assessments on an ongoing basis. "By re-using the same assessment, the teachers at Pine View do not follow this practice," said Memminger.
After compiling their research results, the parents approached the school board. Superintendent Lori White said she would study the issue with the staff. "She has not given us a time frame," said Patel. "Every month we lose is time lost," added York.
The school board is planning to discuss the issue during an upcoming work session, according to Steve Cantees, executive director of high schools for the district. "If it does not discuss it this month, it will do so in January," he told the Pelican.
The school board’s December workshop schedule does not mention such a review.
Cantees also maintained it takes several hours for teachers to develop their tests and once a test is taken out of the school, it loses its integrity. With regard to using the same tests year after year, Cantees said that only a little of the instructional material undergoes change on an annual basis.
"Essentially, much of the content will not change," Cantees said.
The teachers’ inability and reluctance to create different tests baffles the parents who addressed the school board and spoke to the Pelican. In the Sarasota County schools, teachers have an extra 30 minutes of planning time daily to prepare for classes, a period funded by special referendum dollars, they pointed out.
They also say they had never expected this to become such an emotional issue. "This was supposed to be a conversation between parents and teachers," said York. "See what it has become."
December 11th 2008 - 12:16PM