Many Pleasant Valley High School students dread ISASP testing. The long tests and lack of understanding why students must take them lead to complaints across grade levels. Although the tests feel irrelevant to students, in the long run, they serve an important purpose to the school.
Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress, or ISASP, is a test that students in grades third through eleventh test on math, English and science. These tests are designed to evaluate student growth and are aligned with the Iowa Core standards of learning. They were developed at the University of Iowa through the legislation HF 2235 and started being administered in spring 2019.
These tests span two days at Pleasant Valley: April 7-8. During those two days, students are assigned a class to test in. Sophomores have to take an additional science section, while seniors don’t have to take the ISASP at all.
Students often don’t understand why these tests are important or how they affect them. Instead, they just see two days where they are stuck in a classroom taking long tests.
Heather Jeffers, the curriculum, instruction and assessment facilitator for the Pleasant Valley school district, recognizes that these tests provide valuable information for schools. “Schools are held accountable for making sure students are learning. If a school or district does not meet certain expectations, the state may step in with additional support or oversight,” Jeffers said.
The tests are important for the whole school district. Both federal and state laws require annual state assessments, which ISASP provides for Iowa. These tests allow schools and the state to learn of and address academic problems the institution might be facing.
Not only do the results affect the school as a whole, but also individual departments and classrooms. “At the school level, we use ISASP results to better understand where we are and are not meeting student needs. The data can be broken down by grade level, teacher, and by different groups of students, which helps us see patterns,” Jeffers shared. “For example, one math team noticed that students were consistently scoring lower in statistics. Because statistics is something that shows up on college entrance exams, they knew this was an important gap to address. They made changes to the order of their curriculum and instruction, and over time, student performance improved.”
Ellie Thomas, a school counselor at PV, understands some students don’t realize the importance of their ISASP results. “We use ISASP scores for some course placement,” Thomas said. “We also have a high number of students who take concurrent college courses through Scott Community College during their senior year. Plus, legislation states that for students to take college coursework in high school, they must be proficient on their ISASP.”
ISASP results do directly affect some aspects of a student’s daily school life, not only class placement. The scores are also used to determine whether a student needs additional support or extended learning opportunities.
Although these tests are important, Jeffers points out that it is crucial to remember “that ISASP is just a snapshot of a moment in time and doesn’t tell the whole story.”
While it may not seem like the tests are important to students, the outcomes of ISASP provide information for Iowa and the district to better assist students’ learning and development, both individually and as a group.
Students must understand the role they play and the need to perform to the best of their abilities on these tests, even when the feeling of never ending-questions is hard to endure.
