A truce was reached last Thursday in the debate over what tests the Fairfax County Public Schools will use to measure how well young readers are comprehending their materials, but it may only be temporary.
The School Board voted 11-1, with Mychele Brickner (At large) opposed, on March 21 to request the Virginia Department of Education to conduct a one-year pilot program that uses the Phonemic Awareness Phonics Assessment (PAPA) and Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) as the school district’s diagnostic tools.
The state education department was supporting the use of the Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening (PALS) for its Early Intervention Reading Initiative. At stake was the $500,000 the state provides school districts to implement the program.
The request by school staff to seek permission for the pilot program also stirred up the Republican-endorsed members on the School Board as to when the elected officials should be made aware of disagreements with the state that could result in the loss of funding.
THE SCHOOL SYSTEM had been engaged in a dialogue with the state since last year over which tests best produce the results the Department of Education was looking for. Last summer, the school system requested a waiver from using the PALS since it had already undergone extensive training of its teachers with the DRA. Up until that point, the School Board had been receiving copies of the communications between the education department and county schools Superintendent Daniel Domenech.
At a work session March 11, Domenech told the School Board the funding could be in jeopardy.
“As of last Friday, we have reached an impasse … the state department of ed denied our request for an alternate form of testing,” Domenech said at the work session. “This morning the state said it will grant us the option to do the testing we want and at the end of the year submit data to see if the data meets their requirement.”
The update left board members wondering why they had not been kept in the loop since July and questioned what happens at the end of the year if the state kills the pilot program.
“I’ve got to tell you Dr. Domenech … I’m distressed at the amount of deception,” Brickner said at the work session.
She said last summer, the board was told the school district wanted to use the DRA test while the state wanted the PALS used. She said at no time was the board told that to use the DRA there would be the added requirement of using the PAPA. Nor was the board told the funding for the program could be in jeopardy by using the DRA/PAPA combination, she said.
“We are facing a $71 million shortfall. We have to be sure we squeeze everything we can from the state,” said Tessie Wilson (Braddock). “The issue is getting correct information to the board.”
THE QUESTIONS continued at the meeting last Thursday, where teachers and principals spoke out in favor of requesting the pilot program. The school system pushed the DRA/PAPA combination because the tests take less time to administer than the PALS, which is given to students individually, cutting into class time, said Domenech.
“Teachers have found the ability to share data across grade levels to be a strong vehicle for communication,” said Rita Davis, a first-grade teacher at Freedom Hill Elementary School, of the DRA test. “Not only do teachers share a similar vocabulary when discussing the reading achievement of students, but teachers share the information with parents as well. As a result, both parents and teachers are able to closely monitor the reading achievement of children from grades one through three.”
Margaret Scott, president of the Fairfax Association of Elementary School Principals said that for the last three years first- and second-grade teachers have been required to undergo 15 hours of training to learn how to administer the DRA and properly analyze the results. She said the PALS test does not provide enough information about the student’s ability to comprehend the materials and instead only tests phonological skills.
“Although other school systems may need the baseline data made available by PALS, we believe that Fairfax County Public Schools teachers have a much broader knowledge of their students’ needs through our system-wide use of the DRA, not once but several times a year.”
SCHOOL BOARD member Christian Braunlich (Lee), however, wanted to know why the PALS was deemed too time consuming. He said he contacted the person who wrote the test and according to her, the time needed to train teachers and to administer the test should be less than what the school system was reporting.
“There are only two PALS test that are required to be administered individually,” Braunlich said. “If the student meets the benchmarks, the student is done. If the student doesn’t meet the benchmarks, they continue the diagnostic tests.”
Braunlich tried unsuccessfully to have the PALS substituted for the PAPA in the pilot program. The vote came down to party split with Republican-endorsed Braunlich, Brickner, Wilson and Rita Thompson (At large) favoring the PALS over PAPA in combination with the DRA. After the measure failed, all but Brickner supported the PAPA/DRA proposal.