D.C. TO UNVEIL NEW SKILLS TEST (2024)

Test anxiety is public enemy number one at District schools these days, as teachers and students gear up for today's unveiling of the system's first new standardized test in 13 years.

"This is the biggie," said Valeria Ford, the system's testing director. "This is the test that gauges the progress of the school system and individual schools." This is the test that ranks schools, the one parents study before picking a neighborhood.

And this is the week. Today through Thursday, every school in the District will administer the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills to a total of 33,000 students in grades 3, 6, 8, 9 and 11. (Virginia and Maryland schools use different tests.)

The results, which will be available this summer, will almost certainly show a decline in student performance. That is what happens in 85 percent of school systems that switch tests.

It does not mean students have gotten dumber. Rather, it means students nationwide have been doing better in school.

The test that the District and many other systems gave until now measured achievement using a standard based on student performance in 1971 -- right around the time nationwide achievement levels hit their low point.

Schools periodically change tests, mainly because as curriculums and teaching methods change, tests have to be rewritten to reflect those changes. For example, the District's new test includes questions reflecting the back-to-basics movement that has swept American education in the past decade.

As tests change, so does the way they are scored. Scores on the new test, which the District bought from CTB/McGraw-Hill for $240,000, are reported by grade level; a seventh grader learning at grade level would get a 7.0 score.

But that score is based on new standards determined in 1981. Because the new norm is higher than the old one, the District system is "likely to see fewer kids scoring at or above the national norm," the test publisher told school officials. "So ready your explanations for a skeptical public."

Unwilling to concede that scores will drop, D.C. Superintendent Floretta D. McKenzie has pushed principals and teachers to raise scores despite the change. The school system has held mass meetings of teachers and even created a slide show called "Maintaining the Mark Despite the Change."

District test scores have increased markedly in recent years, from 3.1 to 4.1 among third graders between 1978 and 1986, and from 7.5 to 9.4 among ninth graders over the same period.

Back in the classrooms, there has been no shortage of effort. At Browne, a junior high of 650 students on a hill overlooking the parkland along the Anacostia River, every student in every class is required to attend a test-taking course that meets every day. The pass-fail course, taught in homerooms, centers on testing skills, the logical shortcuts students can take to complete tests faster.

"On the math test, we show them how to eliminate choices that aren't logical without doing any math," said Browne Principal Cynthia Clarke, a former math teacher.

In those special classes, and in every other class during the past few weeks, students have slogged through worn copies of the old test, answering multiple-choice questions on spelling, science, arithmetic and the always-knotty reading passages.

Some portions of the new test are quite different from the old one. Instead of testing vocabulary knowledge with synonym questions only, the new test uses four types of questions, including identifying prefixes and suffixes and supplying the missing word in a sentence.

Students also have a textbook, called "Scoring High," that emphasizes test-taking skills, familiarizing the children with the kinds of questions that appear on standardized tests.

Such intensive practice raises questions about whether the school is teaching students the test rather than the material they need to know. But Clarke defended intensive instruction in test-taking. "The children have the skills," she said. "But if they don't work quickly, their scores won't reflect their skills, so we have to demystify the testing process."

John Stewart, senior product manager for the test publisher, said test preparation courses actually help students learn the school curriculum. "The whole idea behind the test is to measure what's being taught, so our test subjects are what is in the curriculum," he said.

In the final days before the test, the classroom emphasis has shifted from teaching the material to giving practical advice. Teachers are urging students to get eight or nine hours of sleep before the exam and to eat well.

"We tell the children that, quite frankly, these scores will be used to determine what classes you take in high school and perhaps even what kind of career paths you go down," said Assistant Principal Annie Beard.

At Browne, the school is taking testing so seriously that there will be "Do Not Disturb" signs on doorknobs and a weeklong ban on the blaring public address announcements that interrupt classes throughout normal school days.

Still, some students expect to suffer from jitters this week. David Simmons, an eighth grader, said: "You say the word 'test' and I get scared. I was like that ever since I was little. In a test, anything could happen."

Eighth grader Adolpha Edwards said she has a pretest strategy: "I study and I study, and then I pray that I'll pass."

If Adolpha does not have a test prayer, her school is ready for her, with a test prayer that has been handed out to every student:

Now I lay me down to study,

I pray the Lord I won't go nutty.

If I should fail to learn this junk,

I pray the Lord I will not flunk . . . .

If I should die before I wake,

That's one less test I'll have to take.