Attack on school chief Kathy Hoffman lacks key testing context

School test scores are being used to score points in the race for Arizona’s top education seat.

Challenger Tom Horne, a Republican who held the job over a decade ago, said Democratic incumbent Kathy Hoffman has failed to focus on the basics.

"Under the current regime, the focus has been on everything except academics," Horne tweeted Aug. 21. "Student learning, and therefore student test scores, plummeted. Even before COVID, under the current regime, over half of Arizona students were not proficient in reading or math." 

Hoffman took office in January 2019. That gave her about 14 months before COVID closed schools and put students into online learning. We looked at whether test scores fell on her watch, and how they compared with previous years.

Horne fails to include significant context, in particular, the outside factors played a role in academic proficiency. 

We reached out to Horne and he pointed us to the AZMerit results.

When Hoffman became superintendent in 2019, 42% of Arizona students passed the AZMerit for both its reading and math sections. That was four months after she took office and was little changed from the preceding years. 

Arizona Department of Education records show that the passing rate for sections of the AZMerit dating back to 2015 ranged from 38% to 41% before Hoffman. 

The state began using the AZMerit test in 2015. In April 2022, the state switched to the Arizona's Academic Standards Assessment.

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Standardized testing in Arizona takes place in the spring. Hoffman had been superintendent for four months when students were tested in her first year.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools. The state canceled standardized testing that year. Testing resumed in 2021 and the damage to test scores was striking. For math proficiency, the percentage had fallen from 42% in 2019 to 31% in 2021. For reading, the percentage fell from 42% to 38%.

Among education researchers, there is no debate that COVID-19 upended student learning across the board. The latest national survey found that the country had the "largest average score decline in reading since 1990, and the first-ever score decline in mathematics." 

In Arizona, scores recovered modestly in 2022. The passing rate for math rose two percentage points to 33%, and for reading, scores went up three points to 41%.

Horne said that under Hoffman, "student test scores plummeted. Even before COVID, under the current regime, over half of Arizona students were not proficient in reading or math."

Hoffman had been in her position four months when testing took place. At the end of the 2018-19 school year, 42% of Arizona students had achieved a passing score on the state’s standardized reading tests. That was higher than the year prior, and indicative of steady improvement since 2015.

After schools started testing again following COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, student performance did drop. Math scores fell by nine points and reading by four.

But school systems nationwide saw similar declines in student performance.

Horne presents statistics to put Hoffman in a poor light, but he leaves out significant context.

We rate this claim Mostly False.