At the first Cloverdale Unified School District (CUSD) Board of Trustees meeting since students headed back to in-person class, the board will be discussing what standardized testing may look like this year and will be viewing a variety of updates and presentations.
The meeting is slated to begin public session at 6 p.m. over Zoom, and the full meeting agenda can be found here.
Reports
As part of its regular agenda, the board will be receiving presentations and/or reports updating them on the progress of the district’s various Measure H projects and will be receiving an update from Cloverdale Superintendent Betha MacClain about the reopening of schools. Additionally, it will receive information about the development of the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) and a presentation reviewing the district’s special education program.
Flexible testing
The board of trustees will be discussing a request from the district that would afford flexibility when it comes to administering standardized testing for the current school year. According to the request, this would allow the district to “administer the most appropriate and useful standards-based assessment for each grade span in order to document student progress and provide access to information that will inform instructional design and methods, academic differentiation, intervention and measure progress.”
Flexibility with standardized testing has been approved at both national and state levels this year, given the likelihood that the nature of distance and hybrid learning would disrupt the time that students and teachers have to administer standardized tests.
Most recently, in late March the United States Department of Education approved testing flexibility, saying that there would be no negative consequences for using local assessments for students rather than standardized ones.
According to the proposed district resolution, approval of the request for flexibility means that instead of administering tests like the California Science Test (CAST), California Alternative Assessment (CAA), English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC) and others, the district will instead use assessments like the STAR tests and others.
Additionally, the board will certify its sufficiency of instructional materials for the 2020-21 school year and will be discussing the district’s initial proposal for contract negotiations with the Teachers Association of Cloverdale for the 2020-21 school year. The district first presented its proposed items of negotiation during the board’s March 24 meeting.
