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ST. PAUL, Minn., April 29, 2015 – Education Minnesota President Denise Specht released the following statement Wednesday in response to passage of the Senate policy and finance bills, which included important changes to standardized testing in the state.

In the policy bill, a bipartisan group of senators capped the amount of class time that students spend on standardized testing at 2 percent of the school year, or about 19 hours in elementary school and about 20 hours in middle school and high school. The restriction is on both mandated state tests and locally adopted tests, but does not include International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement exams.  Districts may be granted exemptions.

“The sheer volume of learning time lost to students filling in bubbles has become a bipartisan issue,” Specht said. “We thank Sens. Wiger and Petersen for listening to parents and educators and taking the lead on this issue. This bill is an important step toward raising creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving above the route memorization measured by standardized tests.”

The Senate also acknowledged the bungled rollout of the 2015 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments by the state’s new testing vendor. The finance bill would permit districts to set aside this year’s MCA scores in evaluations of teachers and in rankings of schools.

“It’s not fair to parents, educators, students or the public to attach high-stakes to these tests,” Specht said. “We’ve heard from educators who describe frustrated students rushing through questions between system crashes, third graders waiting for 30 minutes for the next question to load, built-in calculators kicking out every answer as ‘zero,’ and on and on. Test-based accountability is flawed under the best circumstances, but this year has been just ridiculous.”

Specht also encouraged lawmakers to increase the spending target for E-12 education above $365 million in the Senate finance bill to at least the target in the governor’s budget, $695 million.

“No one wants class sizes to get bigger, or their old neighborhood school to go another year without updates or even see cuts to valuable after-school programs like band, robotics or athletics – but that’s where we’re headed,” Specht said. “With a nearly $2 billion structural surplus, it’s unbelievable that we’re talking about cutbacks when we should be talking about making more progress on school-based preschool, improving teaching quality and providing more support to the neediest students. If not now, when?”

About Education Minnesota

Education Minnesota represents 70,000 professionals working together for excellence in education for all students. Education Minnesota’s members include teachers and education support professionals in Minnesota’s public school districts, faculty members at Minnesota’s community and technical colleges and University of Minnesota campuses in Duluth and Crookston, retired educators and student teachers. Education Minnesota is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association and AFL-CIO.