Re: SAT Error Highlights Testing's Flaws

[Free2teach1@aol.com]

"The testing industry -- dominated by CTB/McGraw-Hill,  Harcourt 
Assessment and Pearson -- is stretched too thin for the public's  good.

"The volume is way up, and the people with the competence to do  this 
don't exist," said Robert Schaeffer of the group FairTest, which  opposes 
many of the ways standardized tests are used.  

Is this the problem? It sounds like all we need are more competent  people to 
work the testing machines and score the tests? Well, if things  don't change, 
there will be even less competent people around -- has  anybody noticed?
 
The SAT story in the  news is a perfect opportunity to change the 
conversation from talking about  the errors to questioning the validity of using  these 
ridiculous standardized tests with punitive consequences as the  cornerstone 
for education reform - and instead, we get the same old, tired  framework about 
how the testing companies just can't keep up with NCLB and how  the scores 
aren't reliable. There will never be 100 reliability in anything  of this 
magnitude and it is stupid to think otherwise, just like it is stupid to  think there 
will ever be 100% proficiency for all students by 2014.
 
I have just lived through my first week of standardized  testing as a student 
teacher, saw how my special ed students reacted to  it -and took a look at 
the content of that test. Unless the conversation  and discourse over this issue 
starts to change, testing companies will just  ramp up for more business and 
announce that they've fixed the problem  -- just in time for Spellings' panel 
to recommend extending  NCLB to high schools and colleges. 
 


Look for the next headline - Testing Companies  Fix Problem - Go Back to 
Sleep.








In a message dated 3/12/2006 2:49:12 P.M. Eastern Standard  Time, 
bobschaeffer@earthlink.net writes:

MISTAKES  ON SAT SCORES RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT TESTING
Baltimore Sun -- March 12, 2006
by Justin Pope, the  Associated Press

For the past five years, Hamilton College in upstate  New York has been 
one of a growing number of colleges not to require the  SAT exam. The 
test causes too much anxiety, Hamilton concluded, and  there's a risk of 
missing bright students who don't test well.

On  Tuesday night, Hamilton's faculty voted unanimously to make that 
policy  permanent. The next morning brought a reminder that there's 
another  potential downside to standardized tests -- news arrived that 
4,000 SAT  exams taken last October had been mis-scored.

"They do a lot of things  right," Monica Inzer, Hamilton dean of 
admission and financial aid, said  of the College Board, which owns the 
exam. "But it shows how vulnerable we  all are when we depend too much on 
one test."

The error affected  fewer than 1 percent of test-takers and shouldn't 
affect admissions  decisions -- though Inzer noted that it's too late for 
students to apply  to schools they might have considered with a higher 
score.

Experts  say mistakes are inevitable in any operation on the scale of 
grading  millions of tests. Still, the episode is likely to spark wider 
discussion  about standardized tests -- both college entrance exams and 
the growing  number of high-stakes, state-level exams. Just how much risk 
of error is  tolerable when students' futures are at stake?

Recent years have seen a  number of scoring errors on state-level tests, 
graduate school exams like  the Graduate Management Admission Test. Some 
were small and caught early,  others significant. In 2003 and 2004, 4,100 
people were incorrectly told  by the Educational Testing Service that 
they failed a teacher licensing  exam. In 2000, more than 8,000 Minnesota 
high school students were  mistakenly told that they had failed a state 
exam, and dozens missed their  class graduation ceremonies.

That mistake prompted a previous  incarnation of Pearson Educational 
Management, which also scores the SAT,  to pay a $7 million settlement. 
On college admissions bulletin boards this  week, there was talk of 
lawsuits in response to the SAT mistake, along  with angry comments from 
students and parents.

While the SAT error  was comparatively small in scale, "it is such a 
visible program, that  people freak out," said Scott Marion, vice 
president for the New  Hampshire-based National Center for the 
Improvement of Educational  Assessment.

"These students and their families are so anxious, and  something like 
this even though it's relatively minor out of the millions  of kids who 
took standardized tests this year, it rattles their sense of  anxiety 
even more," said Wylie Mitchell, dean of admissions at Bates  College in 
Maine, another SAT-optional school.

Critics of  standardized testing seized on the error as confirmation that 
the testing  industry -- dominated by CTB/McGraw-Hill, Harcourt 
Assessment and Pearson  -- is stretched too thin for the public's good.

"The volume is way up,  and the people with the competence to do this 
don't exist," said Robert  Schaeffer of the group FairTest, which opposes 
many of the ways  standardized tests are used.

A report by Education Sector, a  Washington-based think tank, portrayed a 
highly competitive industry  facing huge pressure from its biggest 
clients -- the states -- to cut  costs and deliver results quickly. That 
time pressure is sometimes  reinforced by contract provision for 
financial penalties if scores are  late coming back.

Pearson says the SAT error may have been caused by  excessive moisture 
that caused answer sheets to expand and some marks to  be unreadable. 
Spokesman David Hakensen said Friday that Pearson has  invested heavily 
in quality and capacity; since 2000, it has increased its  number of 
scanners by 66 percent, added 60 percent more processing space  and 
increased its report printing capacity 45 percent.

 
Judy  Rabin
Monmouth University

Given the existence of an idealized vision  of the community, movements of 
protest are likely to occur within the political  nation when the discrepancy 
between the image and the reality comes to seem  intolerably  wide.

--   J.H. Elliott