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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 results, I grouped them all... I ended up with about 20 groups that I had to give in about, 30 minutes for 4 days," Martinez said, describing how teachers used flexible grouping across classrooms so students could receive small-group intervention without leaving single teachers with one-student groups.
Martinez and Principal Leanne Hayter (Knapp Elementary) told the board the testlets drill down through multiple components of reading — phonemic awareness, decoding and encoding — and may require teachers to administer successive testlets at earlier grade levels until they locate a student’s specific skill gap. Martinez described a current classroom schedule of approximately five small groups in a 25-minute block and said the testlet process is being used to both identify needs and to progress-monitor students during weekly small-group time.
Board members pressed on trade-offs. One board member noted the lost instructional time and asked whether teachers could be allowed to skip directly to a known lower level rather than putting students through many testlets. Hayter said teachers do sometimes know a student’s likely placement, but the current state/Department of Education testing rules required the district to follow the screening and testlet sequence this year; she said districts and the state are already reviewing the burden and that some interim assessments have been canceled for next year in response to the concerns.
"We've given all these testlets. Now what do we do with it?" Superintendent Cleveland said, summarizing the district’s challenge: turning a large collection of diagnostic data into practical classroom instruction.
Board members and staff described several operational steps the district is taking: (1) principals and leadership temporarily paused some testlet administration to let teachers resume instruction and leadership spent a week pulling small groups for targeted instruction; (2) teachers are using a weekly small-group day to administer additional testlets only as progress-monitoring when needed; and (3) the district is communicating with the Arkansas Department of Education about changes already being made at the state level in response to feedback from districts.
The board did not take a formal vote on policy changes related to the testlets during the meeting. District staff said they will continue to use testlet results to inform individual reading plans (IRPs) and to seek state-level relief where possible.
Teachers and administrators framed the testlets as a precise diagnostic tool. Martinez said the testlets found “the middle group” of students whose needs were previously harder to pinpoint and allowed teachers to create targeted interventions. But principals and teachers also stressed that administering the testlets required large staff time and scheduling adjustments.
The discussion concluded with staff noting that the district will continue to refine how and when testlets are used, and that the Department of Education has already made some changes in response to district feedback.
Ending: District leaders said they plan to continue using testlet data to guide instruction while advocating with state education officials for changes that reduce testing burden and preserve instructional time.
