UMATILLA COUNTY — Oregon schools are getting unprecedented flexibility in how they conduct state testing this year in the face of a year marred by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Umatilla County’s two largest school districts are taking different tacks in how they are approaching the test.

Hermiston School District has announced it will opt out of state testing for the current school year.

School districts usually have students participate in state assessments in reading, math and science each spring. But Superintendent Tricia Mooney said this year the district will forgo those assessments in order to maximize the in-person instructional time students have left instead.

“This is really about supporting our kids and supporting our teachers,” she said.

Usually, state testing takes between one to two weeks for students to complete. Even with much shorter tests this year, it would still mean time not in front of a teacher for students who just returned to in-person classes. Mooney said testing often creates anxiety for students, as well, and the district doesn’t want to add to what has already been an anxious time.

“We need to focus on making connections and building relationships and instructing students,” she said.

Mooney said that doesn’t mean teachers aren’t still assessing their students’ learning in the classroom. Educators are still monitoring individual students’ growth and understanding. But state assessments have in the past been a way for districts to compare groups of students — checking whether one elementary school in the district is lagging behind the others, for example, or spotting trends between grade levels.

“We already know this year’s fifth graders didn’t have the same opportunities as last year’s fifth graders,” Mooney said.

The assessments also provide a way for the Oregon Department of Education to compare school districts across the state. But Mooney said the department has already said it will be suspending the usual accountability measures tied to test scores. The department is also suspending the “essential skills requirement” for both this year and next year for graduating seniors. The requirement has, in the past, required that seniors either pass their state tests or submit a sufficient work sample in those subjects before graduating.

She said the district fully intends to start participating in state assessments again next year.

The Pendleton School District didn’t even know that opting out of state testing was an option.

But when considering whether to hold tests this spring or defer them to the fall, Pendleton Superintendent Chris Fritsch said administrators preferred starting next year as normally as possible without having to worry about administering assessments.

Matt Yoshioka, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, said Pendleton would have preferred the U.S. Department of Education approved the state’s waiver to forgo testing completely.

The waiver was denied, but the federal government has allowed local school districts to reduce the scope of testing this year, and Pendleton plans to take advantage.

With each grade level only required to take one test, Yoshioka said he expects every grade level to complete their testing in one day across the first few weeks of May. He added that students still learning online would be required to come to school to take the test, but 90% have already made the individual choice of opting out of testing this year.

“That’s fine,” he said. “They have the right to do that.”

The state isn’t scrutinizing test scores this year, and neither is the Pendleton School District.

With the academic struggles created by the pandemic and the abbreviated test schedule, Yoshioka said the assessments won’t give the district an accurate idea of where students are at. Administering the tests this spring, Yoshioka said, is merely a way to fulfill federal requirements.

The county’s smaller school districts also had choices to make.

For Umatilla School District, the district has always gone its own way on assessments. It relies on the MAPS test, rather than the Smarter Balanced test used for state report cards, to gather data about student progress. Superintendent Heidi Sipe said the district has continued with online MAPS tests this year, with the final round of tests in May. Students will only take the Smarter Balanced test if their parents specifically request it.

In Stanfield School District, Superintendent Beth Burton said Stanfield students will be given the opportunity to take the state assessment this spring if their parents request it, but the district will not be making it a priority to promote higher participation rates.

“Instead, we are continuing to focus on student connections, teaching, and learning,” she wrote in an email.