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| Secretary of Education Dr. Melody Schopp |
Across the state, classrooms and playgrounds
are bustling with activity. I can’t help but get caught up in the excitement.
I remember fondly my time as a teacher.
There’s nothing quite like the anticipation of “back to school”—making sure
everything is just so, from the brightly decorated bulletin boards to the cozy
reading corner and colorful name tags on desks waiting to be filled with
students.
Now, part of my job is visiting schools and
classrooms all over our state, meeting the administrators, teachers and staff who
tirelessly dedicate themselves to South Dakota students. This part of my job never
feels like work. It’s an honor.
Every day South Dakota educators prepare
students for college, careers and life. This preparation starts with those
wide-eyed little kindergartners and carries all the way through to high school
seniors ready to take on the world.
That’s a high calling. So, how do they do
it? Good teachers know that there are three components vital to providing a
quality educational experience: high quality standards, high quality
instruction and high quality assessment.
Standards explain what students should know
and be able to do at each grade level.
With new standards in English language arts
and math, South Dakota teachers are going further in-depth with their instruction, helping
students achieve deeper levels of understanding and make connections between
classroom learning and the outside world. This is important work that takes
time.
In the spring, South Dakota students will be
tested on the new ELA and math standards when they take the new Smarter Balanced
assessment. This new assessment provides a much more meaningful picture of
student performance than our previous test.
We know that Smarter Balanced test results
will look different than Dakota STEP test scores. It’s important to remember,
though, that the two tests should not be compared. They measure student
proficiency on two different sets of standards, and there will be a period of
adjustment as students become familiar with the new standards.
The standards in ELA and math have been
raised, so Smarter Balanced test scores are likely to make it appear that
student proficiency has dropped. This always happens with a new test. It does
not mean students are performing poorly. It means that we are challenging
students and preparing them for the rigors of postsecondary and careers in
today’s world. And I am confident that, given time, South Dakota students will
rise to the challenge.
Assessment is just one piece of the
education puzzle. All the pieces—high quality standards, instruction and assessment—fit
together and play a vital role in every student’s education.
