Big Win #2: The More Learning, Less Testing Act
The new Maryland law will cut 730 hours of school testing
Maryland’s educators have gotten a lot of attention for helping to pass the Protect Our Schools Act — legislation to reset the state’s school accountability system so there’s less emphasis on standardized testing and greater focus on other measures more indicative of a student’s opportunity to learn.
But there was another hugely important education bill that passed the Maryland General Assembly this year that reduces testing in a much more direct way. The More Learning, Less Testing Act — which cleared both the House (139–0) and Senate (47–0) without a single no vote—limits mandated testing to 2.2% of the school year, except in eighth grade, when the limit is at 2.3%. That comes out to 23.8 hours in pre-kindergarten through seventh grade, 24.8 hours in eighth grade, and 25.7 hours in high school.
And while that might sound like a lot of testing, it’s far less than the amount of time many Maryland school districts have used for mandated assessments in recent years. Here’s how many hours of testing each district in Maryland will cut —across the 14 grade levels (pre-K through 12th grade) — to comply with the new law:
Added together, the More Learning, Less Testing Act will eliminate an estimated 730 hours across 18 districts when the cap goes into effect during the 2018–2019 school year. In six districts, mandated assessments likely won’t have to change unless there were data collection problems, although the law does prevent them from over-testing like the other counties have until now. But for students in school systems like Anne Arundel, Carroll, Cecil, Dorchester, and Queen Anne’s, there will be a lot less standardized testing. For example, fifth graders in Dorchester County will have 29.2 fewer hours of testing—the equivalent of having an entire week of instruction added back to the school year.
“Educators applaud legislative leaders in both parties for coming together to establish a commonsense safeguard against over-testing in our schools. This means our kids will have more time to learn important well-rounded skills, and our teachers can get back to why they went into the profession in the first place: inspiring their students to love learning.”
— Betty Weller, president of the Maryland State Education Association
Big Win for Students Follows Years of Advocacy from Educators
After New York enacted a 2% testing cap in 2014, Maryland educators began a three-year plan to pass a similar law in our state. In order to find out exactly how much mandated testing there is each year, we passed a law in 2015 creating the Commission to Review Maryland’s Use of Assessments in Public Schools.
When students went back to school for the 2015–2016 school year, educators launched a public awareness campaign to explain how over-testing takes away valuable instruction time and narrows the curriculum.
When the Commission finished its study of how much testing goes on in Maryland schools (a lot), MSEA teamed up with Del. Eric Luedtke — a former teacher — and Sen. Roger Manno during the 2016 General Assembly session to introduce legislation to cap federal, state, and district mandated testing at 2% of the school year. Buoyed by educator voices calling for the testing limit — including an energetic “Week of Action” and thousands of emails and phone calls to state representatives — the bill passed the House of Delegates unanimously. But it stalled in the Senate after legislators expressed an interest in waiting for the Commission to make final recommendations.
In the summer of 2016, the Commission released its recommendation that every school system create a District Committee on Assessments — including classroom teachers, test coordinators, and support professionals — to identify redundant or unnecessary testing and make cuts to local assessment mandates. But just five districts agreed to implement the recommendation in full, frustrating legislators who hoped the issue could be addressed locally.
So in December, educators and legislators announced a plan to bring back the legislation to cap testing at 2% of instruction time, especially in light of the refusal by most school boards and superintendents to act on their own. The Baltimore Sun covered the plans on their last front page of 2016.
The legislation moved quickly through the House, which again passed the bill unanimously, and the Senate made minor adjustments to the bill — including increasing the cap slightly to 2.2%. The House and Senate then agreed on a compromise version of the bill that included provisions to:
- Create the District Committees on Assessments that most school systems refused to do on their own.
- Change a state-mandated middle and high school social studies test into a performance-based assessment — an innovative, hands-on way of measuring student success beyond the traditional standardized test.
- Give districts a waiver to the 2.2% cap in cases when the local educators association agrees that more time is necessary for student learning.
On the final day of the 2017 General Assembly session, the More Learning, Less Testing Act was passed and sent to Gov. Hogan’s desk for his signature. He has not committed to signing it yet, but it appears likely that he will.
Between the Protect Our Schools Act and the More Learning, Less Testing Act, Maryland has positioned itself as a national leader in reducing both the high stakes and time that go into standardized testing in schools. As MSEA president Betty Weller said in a statement earlier this week:
“The legislature has put Maryland schools in a position to show that our children are more than a test score. The overemphasis on testing has failed to close achievement gaps for the last two decades. It’s not enough to know that some students perform worse than others — we need to know why. Now Maryland is a national leader in refocusing time and resources on the kind of learning opportunities that truly help kids thrive in school.”
