D.C. public school students will take the Stanford 9 achievement test one more time in the spring, though it will cost the city.
City school officials said they have to pay more than $120,000 in penalties for breaking a promise to the Education Department to administer a different standardized exam.
Superintendent Clifford B. Janey ordered new curriculum standards.
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New Superintendent Clifford B. Janey made the decision that will affect some 64,000 students in the system's traditional schools because he plans to introduce yet a different standardized test in the spring of 2006. That one, which will be written for the District, will be aligned with the learning standards that D.C. schools will adopt next school year.
As a result, officials said, it makes no sense to give a new test for only one year.
"We're just trying to make the decision that is best for the kids and that represents the best use of resources," said Meria Carstarphen, whom Janey recently hired as the system's chief accountability officer.
A wrinkle for the District is that Janey's predecessor, Paul L. Vance, signed an agreement with the Education Department in 2002 requiring the school system to use a new standardized test in 2005 in exchange for federal education funds from what is known as Title I, the largest federal program for kindergartners through 12th-graders, which is aimed at improving education in high-poverty schools.
Any violation of that pact, even for a good reason, means sanctions, according to city and federal officials.
"District officials have informed us of their plans for next year, and we continue to have discussions with them," Susan Aspey, press secretary for the Education Department, wrote in an e-mail. "We have no discretion on this: We're required to withhold 25% of the administrative part of Title I for every year that they don't comply."
Carstarphen said that amounted to $123,420, a sum the system will not have to repay but, rather, will lose when the final federal payments are made. Aspey did not specify an amount.
Another problem for Janey is that the school system has already spent about $3 million in federal money to write and field-test questions for an exam called TerraNova, which was supposed to be given next spring.
Janey and his special assistant, Robert Rice, said they did not believe that all of that money would be wasted because some of the questions already developed could be used on the test that will ultimately be given.
That test will be designed to measure knowledge of the content standards that Janey plans to introduce in the fall. The standards, already in use in Massachusetts, are cited by many educators as among the best in the nation because they are clearly written and comprehensive.
Content standards state what students should know and be able to do in specific subjects and grades. The District had previously adopted some math and reading standards, but Janey found them insufficient and not evenly applied throughout the schools.
D.C. students will, in 2006, start taking a modified form of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, which is a different kind of test than the Stanford 9 achievement test, the one students have been taking for years to measure academic progress.
The old test is a norm-referenced exam, designed to compare a student's scores with the scores of other test takers. The new one is designed to test a student's understanding of a particular body of knowledge and skills. Officials said they think it will better highlight achievement gaps among students and better show what they are learning -- and not learning.
It will cost about $800,000 to administer the Stanford 9 this spring, school officials said.
An issue facing D.C. educators is how to switch standardized tests and continue to measure students' yearly progress, as required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Many other school systems that have changed exams have that problem.
D.C. officials said there are ways to design the new test to allow for valid comparisons with students' performance on the previous exam.
