{"id":10714,"date":"2017-03-08T08:18:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T13:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/?p=10714"},"modified":"2017-03-08T08:18:53","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T13:18:53","slug":"dinniman-questions-costs-of-standardized-testing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/?p=10714","title":{"rendered":"Dinniman questions costs of standardized testing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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State Sen. Andy Dinniman<\/p><\/div>\n

HARRISBURG \u2014 State Sen. Andy Dinniman (D-19), Minority Chair of the Senate Education Committee, expressed serious concerns Tuesday about the significant amount of state funding being spent on mandatory standardized testing in Pennsylvania schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars on testing while some school districts don\u2019t even have the resources to properly educate students on the subjects upon which they are being tested,\u201d Dinniman said.<\/span><\/p>\n

He also noted that school district after school district is increasing property taxes, at least in part, due to unfunded state mandates, including standardized testing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dinniman\u2019s comments came during today\u2019s Senate Appropriations Committee Budget Hearing on the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE). For the 2017-18 fiscal year, PDE is requesting more than $58 million for testing and related costs, including the storage and assessment of testing data.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, during the 2015-16 fiscal year and the first half of the 2016-17 fiscal year, PDE already spent more than $115 million on testing and related contracts, according to information provided Senate Democratic Appropriations staff.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe total is well over the $100 million we scraped together to increase the Basic Education Subsidy to school districts in the current budget cycle,\u201d Dinniman noted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, Dinniman pointed out that one testing company, Data Recognition Corporation (DRC) of Minnesota, has received more than $742 million in state contracts since 2008. Two of the three DRC contracts were given sole source no-bid extensions. In the period noted above (the 2015-16 fiscal year and the first half of the 2016-17 fiscal year), DRC received more than $88 million. A variety of other companies involved in the assessment and measuring of test scores also received millions of dollars in state expenditures during that same 18-month period. In fact, three companies alone received a total of $19.6 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, appropriate testing is needed for diagnostic purposes and to assist in student learning,\u201d Dinniman emphasized. \u201cHowever, the current PDE requirement of expensive and excessive high-stakes testing wastes both vast sums of money and valuable classroom learning time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, the current PDE tests can\u2019t even be used for diagnostic and educational purposes, since the results are not returned until the next academic year when students are in new classrooms with new teachers!\u201d he added.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

PDE has created an extensive and excessive structure of testing, data collection, and measurement with such initials as PSSA, Keystones, EVASS, PVASS, PIMS, SAS, and the list goes on.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor the taxpayer, the bottom line of this<\/span> bureaucratic structure is the unfunded cost to school districts \u2013 more than $1 billion over the last eight years. The legislature must act on its fiduciary responsibility to thoroughly review and rein in this spending,\u201d Dinniman said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Immediately following today\u2019s budget hearing, Dinniman brought together a group of Deans of Education from various universities and testing experts to discuss with him and Senator John Eichelberger, Majority Chair of the Senate Education Committee, ways to better achieve real accountability in our schools, without excessive testing and spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HARRISBURG \u2014 State Sen. Andy Dinniman (D-19), Minority Chair of the Senate Education Committee, expressed serious concerns Tuesday about the significant amount of state funding being spent on mandatory standardized testing in Pennsylvania schools. \u201cWe are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars on testing while some school districts don\u2019t even have the resources to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10715,"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10714\/revisions\/10715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/downingtowntimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}