Starting with the 2011-12 school year, FISD will change how things look at the end of the first semester and the school year in regard to semester/final exams.

“In the past, the exam schedule has been about a two-week process,” said Kenny Chandler, Director of School Improvement. “Students on a block schedule would review for four days and then the testing schedule would be for four days.”

After this year, those days are gone.

According to Chandler, the exam schedule has been a topic of discussion at the high school level for the past three years, but the need to have more time back in the classroom has become even more evident as districts prepare for the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) assessment program/End-of-Course (EOC). An End-of-Course Assessment think tank which included teachers, support staff and administrators ultimately brought the recommendation forward that it was time for the change.

By the time the End-of-Course testing program is fully phased in (when next year's freshmen become juniors), students may be taking more state-mandated assessments.The state is still finalizing information on the new testing program - currently it appears high school students will take 12 end-of-course exams (3 English/Language Arts, with a two-part writing component which will be like an additional test; 3 Math; 3 Science; and 3 Social Studies.) There are currently only 10 TAKS tests administered at the high school level. Initial information from Texas Education Agency officials stated EOC testing could potentially be administered on 45 different days, including dates for retesting- new information indicates testing may be timed and more than one test administered on a given day. Again, districts are still awaiting final implementation information.See the website for information on STAAR/EOC.

In the 2011-2012 school year, the first semester courses will actually end before the winter break, making the second semester heavier with instructional days. Because the bulk of testing takes place in the spring – with AP exams, state testing and other measurements – the actual days of instruction will end up being comparable. Student activities are also heavier in the spring.

Not having a traditional semester/final exam schedule does not mean that students won’t be tested to see what they know or that they won’t have any exams. Chandler states that a teacher, particularly those in a semester-only or non EOC course, can still develop a unit test that looks back at the curriculum, provide a review and give a cumulative type exam, but the school will not provide for a two week final exam process. Also, the EOC exams will assess what students have learned throughout the course and will be the final exam. Giving additional final exams would be redundant, officials state. Students will still take the highly rigorous curriculum-based assessments and teacher-developed assessments during the year as they do now.

“The bottom line is that with all the other rigorous and high stakes testing taking place, such as AP exams, STAAR/EOC, and college entrance exams, we do not need to add to that any more than is necessary,” Chandler said. “We believe that preserving instructional time is the most important thing we can do.”

In addition to the final exam schedules, the district will continue to look at many of the district-level assessments that are in place to determine their value to teaching and to student learning and will abandon others that are not found to provide a benefit.

“There is a popular phrase that Dr. Reedy and others have used that sort of boils it down – you don’t fatten a pig by weighing it,” he said. “We value assessments and tests to provide feedback to students and parents, to gauge academic mastery and progress and to guide our instructional decisions, but we must do some things differently to protect classroom learning time.”

As schools are communicating this information to students and parents, a question and answer document is being prepared and will be placed here when finalized.