A Blow to Test Secrecy in New York!

[Ed Levine <eddie185@YAHOO.COM>]

The N. Y. State Ed. Dept. has sent the following statement to all
superintendents and principals:

"In a change from previous years, you are no longer required to send
your Test Book 1's [multiple choice, norm-refenced test published by
CTB/McGraw-Hill] to a destruction site at the conclusion of testing
... these materials will no longer be considered secure, and your
school may use extra Test Book 1's ... for instructional purposes."

In our current climate, this is the closest we come to good news.
The norm-referenced exams that New York's fourth- and eighth-grade
students take are no longer subject to top-secret security
provisions! We'll be able to see for ourselves whether or not a
particular item was fair, and we won't be in the dark when we review
test results with kids, parents, teachers, principals, the media, or
any other interested parties.

Rumor has it that CTB/McGraw-Hill had so many foul-ups in recent
years, including the infamous "send 20,000 kids to summer school due
to scoring errors" incident, that they had no choice but to comply
with our requests for an open testing process.

It's a long way to utopia, but I think we've taken a step in the
right direction!

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