Instead, an estimated 60,000 test-takers -- almost one in three -- will grab a computer mouse, gaze at a computer screen and click their way through the test.
They face the same number of questions, drawn from the same list, as students taking their tests on paper. But a student can take the computerized tests anytime from October to May, not just during this year's March 17 to April 18 testing window for paper tests.
Oregon's system of online tests, known as Technology Enhanced Student Assessment, or TESA, has spread from 28 schools in spring 2001 to more than 500 schools this year.
Only Idaho and Virginia have ventured as far as Oregon in testing students on computer. In Virginia, about one-fifth of high school students will take their state tests on computer this spring.
Idaho has accelerated even faster: More than 90 percent of Idaho students in grades two through 10 will take their state reading and math tests online this spring.
Oregon's standardized achievement tests, given to every student in grades three, five, eight and 10, don't simply measure how well students can read and do math. They also are used to rate teachers, schools and school districts. Each year, the state rates schools on a five-point scale from "exceptional" down to "unsatisfactory," mainly using test scores.
While children seem to prefer the computers, adults fear students will have trouble scrolling back through a long reading passage to answer questions that appear on a separate screen. They worry that students won't figure out how to get back to a question they've skipped. They think having to look back and forth from scratch paper to the computer could stymie young children.
But when students actually take a test online, as they have done at Beaverton's Meadow Park Middle School and Elmonica Elementary this year, kids aren't daunted one bit, said Dee Carlton, research specialist for Beaverton schools.
Students pay more attention to the computer than paper tests and toggle through screens like pros, she said.
"This generation of kids is very into computers. A lot of our people worried, 'Oh, third-graders can't do this.' Well, our third-graders are just fine," she said. "And the really neat thing is the kids get immediate feedback as to whether they passed or not, as opposed to with the paper-pencil, they have to wait three months."
Oregon has spent about $2 million a year to develop the computerized tests, train teachers how to give them and to have a Pennsylvania testing company, Vantage Learning, run the online tests and deliver scores electronically.
The cost to the state of offering computerized test is less than for paper-and-pencil tests, because there is no need to print test booklets or answer sheets and to send materials through the mail, said Bill Auty, Oregon's associate superintendent overseeing testing.
Copyright 2003. Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
