By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
When outlining the Burlington Area School District’s schedule for taking the new state student proficiency exams last week, Assistant Superintendent Connie Zinnen said the district would benefit from not being the first onto the new system.
Now, though, the district will be on the same time frame as the rest of the state. The state’s testing window for the new Badger Exam was supposed to open Monday for the English language arts exam, but the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction late last week pushed that date back to April 13.
“At this time, the district is planning to proceed with the administration of the Badger Exam beginning on April 13,” Zinnen said. “The delay of the ELA portion did not impact our original plan. We are hopeful all portions will be functional at that time.
“In the event that there are delays, we will pause and resume when those delays are corrected,” she added.
BASD had intended to start both the English and the math portions of the exam April 13 regardless, due to scheduling concerns and spring break. As Zinnen said last week at the School Board Curriculum Committee meeting, the delay would allow other districts to try the test method out first.
But she also acknowledged “every single day, there is something evolving, changing” with the test, and that was proven again Friday when the delay was announced.
The math portion of the exam had already been pushed back to April 13, but State Superintendent Tony Evers announced that both sections are now delayed due to issues with the testing delivery engine.
Educational Testing Service, which holds the contract to provide Wisconsin’s online state assessment, notified the DPI the middle of last week that it could not deliver the English portion of the exam by Monday’s test window.
“These latest problems with ETS and the additional delay are incredibly frustrating,” Evers said in a press release. “But, my first priority remains ensuring that we have an exam that works for Wisconsin educators and students. I have made it clear to ETS that they must deliver a functioning exam by April 13.”
The delay is the latest in a number of problems with the test, which is replacing the Wisconsin Knowledge Concepts Exam. As Zinnen explained at the meeting last week, the problems have been bad enough that some neighboring districts are asking parents to opt their students out of the exam and the state legislature is looking at not counting this year’s test scores on the annual State Report Cards.
Despite the early concerns, Zinnen said last week there are positives to having the students take the assessment.
“I think it’ll be an opportunity see how our students fare,” said Zinnen, adding that the exam will allow the district to find out how curriculum changes for additional vocabulary and reading rigor have worked.
Practice exams, already in use by the district, are available online by searching “Badger Exam Practice Test.”
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