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Springdale board hears concerns that K–3 "testlets" cost weeks of instruction
Summary
Board staff and principals described districtwide K–3 literacy screening and follow-up "testlet" assessments that produced detailed intervention data but required thousands of sessions and, staff said, the instructional equivalent of roughly 47 school days of classroom time in some schools.
Springdale School District administrators and teachers told the school board Tuesday that a districtwide effort to administer literacy screeners and follow-up “testlets” generated useful diagnostic data but took substantial classroom time.
District leaders reported that Springdale administered 14,407 literacy screeners for kindergarten through third grade and that some schools — notably Knapp Elementary — administered about 1,715 screeners. Teachers and principals said many students needed multiple follow-up testlets, and district staff estimated the total time spent testing at roughly 2,700 minutes per 10 testlets (about 283 hours districtwide), the equivalent of approximately 47 six-hour instructional days.
The details came during Superintendent Doctor Cleveland’s update on the Atlas testlet data, followed by remarks from principals and second-grade teacher Flor Martinez of Napa Elementary, who described how she and her team reorganized classroom schedules to deliver targeted small-group instruction after the testlet results were in.
"When I first got those test…
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