Mulvihill: High school teachers already assess basic skills
By Terry Murry on Wednesday, October 25th, 2023 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
PENDLETON – The Oregon Board of Education has decided to postpone bringing back a basic skills assessment for high school juniors in writing, reading, and math for five years. It was first put on hold during the pandemic. InterMountain Education Service District Superintendent Mark Mulvihill says he would rather the state-level test go away altogether, because those skills are assessed in the classroom every day.
“Let’s get real,” he said. “That’s happening right now in the classroom. They’re being assessed with multiple assessments and then they receive an A, B, C, D, or an F. It’s already there.”
The board stated it was delaying beginning the test again because it perceived an unfairness towards minority and underserved students. Some educators have said that simply lowers the bar for all Oregon students while others state that since students have to meet unchanged requirements to graduate high school, it makes little to no difference.
Mulvihill believes that there should be a statewide agreement on graduation standards that align to standards across the United States about essential skills expected of a high school graduate, but he supports local control about how those standards are achieved.
“We should allow flexibility and individual teaching to meet those standards,” he said. “We need to have agreed upon assessments that say this is proof that they’ve reached them. We have that. We’ve had that for 30 years. What the essential skills is one more layer to show that we reached that. The teacher’s already doing that. The kids are already doing that. We don’t need additional layers. We need to focus on quality teaching, quality assessments, teaching and learning in the classroom.”
