Two years after former state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen switched Montana’s statewide student exam to a controversial new model, education officials have finally given it the green light — with some strings attached.
Members of the state Board of Public Education this month voted to formally adopt the Montana Aligned to Standards Through-Year Exam — better known as MAST — as Montana’s federal accountability test. But only with the promise the Office of Public Instruction set up a task force designed to come up with solutions to the test’s well-documented problems. Those include delayed test results, difficulty interpreting them and low rates of students and parents accessing scores.
At a recent meeting, board member Ron Slinger said surveys have shown students vastly prefer MAST’s model of spreading out testing in smaller bites throughout the year, instead of one big exam in the spring.
“There’s a phenomenal opportunity, and we’re missing it by a very large amount,” Slinger said. “Through-year assessment is really a great concept, but it has to be done correctly; it has to be all-in.”
Montana’s Office of Public Instruction and the Board of Public Education share oversight of the state’s public K-12 schools. But it was OPI that decided to move forward with MAST several years ago.
The state has paid more than $5 million to implement the new test, according to a spokesperson for the education department. That money has so far come from a federal grant.
