WKCE eliminated; new test in the works

October 23, 2009 • Lee Hollman  
Filed under News, Regional

As sophomores throughout the state prepare to sit their annual WKCE exams, the Wisconsin Department of Education is working on making a replacement test.

In previous years, teachers and administrations around the state encountered problems with the exam.

“We’re not able to monitor progress as well as we’d like,” Fort Atkinson High School Principal Dr. Jeff Zaspel said. “It measures academic achievement, which means it measures where somebody is at the given day and time of the test, and doesn’t give any corrective feedback,” Zaspel said.

With the lack of corrective feedback for the students, teachers are having  trouble with selecting the best way to teach their students according to their specific needs, according to the data received from the WKCE .

The WKCE measures a student’s proficiency in a set of criteria, which may not fit a student’s academic needs. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction needed to create a new course of action based on the adjustments needed for the assessment, so it could correspond to students’ specific academic needs.

According the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin will transform its statewide testing program to a new system that combines state, district, and classroom assessments and is more responsive to students, teachers, and parents needs.

“At minimum, students will be taking the WKCE this fall and again during the 2010-11 school year. Results from these tests will be used for federal accountability purposes,” State Superintendent Tony Evers said during a press conference in August.

The creation of a new assessment exam to replace the WKCE will rest mainly on the shoulders of the Next Generation Assessment Task Force, a committee of 42 individuals from a wide background of education and business.

The Task Force reviewed Wisconsin’s assessment history, explored the values and limitations of the current exam, and heard presentations on assessments systems from other states around the country.

Even though many different test ideas where presented to the committee, a new test has not been chosen to replace the WKCE in the next few years.

Even though the WKCE will be continuing for the next few years, the students of the future will be able to take an assessment that may prove more accurately assess students’ needs and abilities.

With the release of this new assessment, the changes that may ensue could alter the educational landscape of Wisconsin Schools of this generation.

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