DENVER — Thousands of students in Colorado won't sit for standardized tests this year after new guidance from the Colorado Department of Education allowed for exemptions for many new-to-country students who arrived after October.
For Denver Public Schools, those guidelines will allow hundreds if not thousands of students to skip this year's Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) testing. That was welcome news for many DPS students, parents and teachers.
At Munroe Elementary School, fifth-grade teacher Javier Ramirez said he has found a way to get his students excited about math – not an easy task for any class. Ramirez is doing it in two languages, Spanish and English, as many of his students moved to Denver with their families in recent months.
"And as soon as we see a new student, we just want them to feel welcome and part of our classroom," Ramirez said.
He said the school can determine a new student's learning level and tailor lessons to meet those needs. But for students in classrooms around Colorado, CMAS testing can be a stressful time.
That's why he said he was grateful that the Colorado Department of Education said many of those migrant children wouldn't have to sit for those standardized tests this year.
"They just got here, and they're learning about language, the system, the school district, the educational system structures," Ramirez said. "And now, also testing. I think it was a really, really good decision not having them do it."
This exemption ensures Ramirez's students can focus on what they're learning, instead of trying to prove what they know on a test.
"It really has given us a little bit of breathing room," said Adrienne Endres, DPS executive director of multilingual education.
Since the start of the school year, DPS has welcomed 3,807 new students. Endres said the state's decision will ensure that hundreds if not thousands of those new students can sit out these tests.
"Yeah, I mean it's huge, right? Imagine you come on a long journey to be here, you're new to the language, you've had a long gap in schooling, and you have to take this assessment that is content you haven't learned in a language you don't yet know. That can be really traumatic," Endres said. "And it's not the kind of assessment that's going to give us a lot of information about what a student does or doesn't know and in experience, it's not fun for anyone."
Endres said that because these students joined the district after October, the scores wouldn't have helped or hurt the district anyway. And, the district is still able to assess where their newest students are at.
“And of course, we’re gathering tons of information about these kiddos all the time," Endres said. "So there’s lots of formative classroom assessments they’re taking. There’s lots of ways we’re gathering data about them. And this one wouldn’t have told us a lot more because they’re so new. So really, it removes the stress and gives kiddos some more time to adapt to the spaces they’re in.”
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