Tucson Unified School District students will see a reduction in standardized tests this school year as the district turns its focus to increased instruction time.
An agreement between the district and Tucson Education Association, the teacherβs union, was announced Wednesday.
βI think in general, many teachers and students have made complaints about how much testing happens and how unmeaningful itβs felt over the years,β said Jim Byrne, TEAβs president.
During the 2024-25 school year, TEA collected more than 1,200 signatures from educators and families who wanted to see a change in focus, Byrne said.
TUSD and TEA created a task force to establish a memorandum of understanding to codify the testing reductions, which was approved July 22 by the governing board.
βI heard about it last year at a community forum the board was invited to, so that was my first taste of it as a board member, but I remember my daughter stressing over the iReady tests in school,β said Jennifer Eckstrom, president of the school board. βThis was a proposal we worked on with Tucson Education Association to improve the use of instructional time.β
Under the memorandum, which covers testing that is managed at the district level but not required by the state, district standardized testing will decrease by 50% for students in grades 2-8.
βIReady can be used as a diagnostic, so it can determine a students reading level and what their skills are, which can be helpful on the front end of the learning cycle. In addition to that, however, we had the benchmark assessments,β Byrne said. βWhat we were hearing is that those would take up to 90 minutes, so in places with not a lot of staffing, like in smaller elementary schools, teachers are pulled away to try to execute that kind of stuff.β
Rather than the previously required three benchmark tests and three iReady tests, this year there will only be three iReady diagnostic tests.
District testing will also see a 30% decrease for students in grades 9-11, with students now taking two ACT mimic tests per year instead of the three that were previously required.
βWhat we saw was burnout. Students were just checking out and saying, βNo, I canβt do this,β and rushing through the test,β Byrne said. βThatβs not a qualitative assessment that gets us to understand what the kids know, what they donβt know and where they need to grow.β
The Arizona Department of Education is working to provide free, formative tests to school districts across Arizona, said Tom Horne, the state schools superintendent. An advocate for standardized testing, Horne said these tests are important to evaluate where students should improve.
βIβm a crusader for excellence against mediocrity. When I see a school district cutting back on formative tests because students are tense, I think thatβs whatβs wrong with a lot of public schools today,β Horne said. βThey donβt realize that a diploma needs to mean something, students need to learn things just to succeed in this economy and as human beings. The easier they make things, the worse it is.β
Arizona mandates statewide assessments for students in third to eighth grade in math, English and science. High school juniors are required to take the ACT exam.
