OPI claims positive reviews for MAST, district representatives say otherwise

The Office of Public Instruction’s implementation of a new through-year testing model caused mixed emotions from piloting district representatives even though the office claimed positive feedback.

Montana Aligned to Standards Through-Year is replacing the Smarter Balanced Assessment, allowing educators and districts to track student data with a “growth model,” which tracks data all year long. MAST is also based off New Meridian’s MasteryGuide Assessment.

The “growth model” has yet to be seen by some of the panelists who spoke at the Board of Public Education meeting May 9.

During the meeting OPI claimed it received mostly positive reviews and comments regarding the system, according to Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen.

“This is a teacher-made test and a Montana test and I am really proud of the good work that our staff has done,” Arntzen said. “We are not teaching to test; we are teaching state standards.”

But not everyone who took part in the pilot felt the same.

Multiple district representatives including superintendents, principals and coordinators piloting the new system were asked during the Board of Public Education meeting what some of the positives and negatives were.

“It can grow. We can see year-to-year, but we can’t see growth throughout the year and that is a big disappointment for us,” Superintendent of Evergreen School District Laurie Barron said.

Barron said she felt the process of implementation was rushed by OPI, denying districts and students key data collection possibilities.

The data collection process made Barron feel strongly that the data should not be used for anything other than figuring out how the program works.

“We are also very concerned about the lack of actionable student data. We hope that it will iron itself out as the pilot continues next year, which is why we’re adamant data not be used next year because it’s still pilot data,” Barron said.

Cedar Rose, OPI assessment director, also made claims of positive comments received from pilot schools before MAST panelists gave their comments about the data collection process.

“There has been a decrease of stress with it. We have seen a decrease in stress with our students and with our teachers since they are more bite-sized pieces,” Rose said.

She said a lot of the pilot districts have been excited with the direction the state is going in regard to MAST.

The time frame of the assessment was claimed to be administered in a class period because of their smaller size.

“Obviously, there are some cases when we look at the data where some of our testlets might be a little bit longer and that is a part of our data reconciliation process,” Rose said.

Rose said they use the reconciliation process to go back and make sure the testing times align properly before taking the test statewide.

The U.S. Department of Education granted OPI the field-testing flexibility waiver, which OPI officials said was a vote of confidence in the program from the department.

MAST will have to go statewide before going through “peer review,” a process that all statewide tests must go through before being approved, which will be submitted for the review process in December 2025.

Krystal Smith, OPI education innovation manager, said the test was designed to positively impact students and teachers.

“We have been in schools all year, supporting and gathering feedback from participating districts,” Smith said. “In Conrad, we hear that teachers and students prefer the smaller chunks of testing over time and are looking forward to the rollout next year for their through-year assessment.”

She continued listing districts like Havre and Clinton and their comments from students and teachers with positive reactions to the testing process.

Riley Devins, principal and director of academic services in the Frenchtown School District, said he agrees with Barron on some of the changes, while mentioning other factors in the integration process that posed challenges.

“The timing of the quick assessment was not a quick assessment,” Devins said. He said the assessments were supposed to be around 15 to 20 minutes but ended up being 30 to 40 minutes for students.

Longitudinal data was something he mentioned but expressed that is not what MAST was producing.

He said the “snapshots” MAST is producing are giving educators positive data seeing where students land in their knowledge on a topic in an overall picture, but it’s not what was promised from the program.

Following testing policies, Devins referenced that in classrooms teachers must remove resources from walls and this could become complicated if testing takes up a larger portion of the year.

Devins does not want teachers altering their rooms multiple times per year. Barron told the Board of Public Education that she felt her students and teachers were much more anxious because of the testing process.

Stanford Public Schools Superintendent Craig Crawford said he has seen the opposite impact in his district, where students and teachers are less anxious about the amount and ways of testing.

There are 17 assessments over 21 weeks of school next year, according to Barron. Out of the 36 weeks in the school year, 58% will be for testing.

Data is not being produced immediately as previously promised by OPI and New Meridian, but they promised pilot schools this would be more available next school year.

Absenteeism will play a role in the new testing format for Devins. He said he's worried that students with “chronic absenteeism” would need to be retested and that he would be working with them for six weeks trying to catch up.

This could impact larger districts in the future, leaving already struggling Montana districts with staff shortages trying to catch up to make sure data is properly recorded.

“If we are doing this every six to eight weeks, I just don’t know how my job is not going to be just makeup testing,” Devins said.