Strong Editorial for Test Transparency

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

TO BOOST SCORES: FCAT TRANSPARENCY
Daytona Beach News-Journal Editorial
March 12, 2008

It's testing week in Florida schools. Contrary to what the state or your 
child's school may have you believe, revealing the contents of the 
Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test does not endanger national 
security. It may even help it, considering that better-educated students 
strengthen national security.

The FCAT bureaucracy disagrees. Revealing a test's questions after it's 
been administered would require the company that writes the test to 
produce a new one every year, in every subject. That would add to the 
annual $38 million to $44 million it costs to write, administer and 
score the tests.

In FCAT math, what the state spends, and how much the company profits 
from it, is more important than whether the test is the tool it's 
designed to be -- showing students exactly what they're learning well 
and what they need to improve on. Secrecy ensures that the only things 
students get are their grades, which are then used to judge their school 
and either reward it with cash or humiliate it with a bad grade.

The secrecy over the test is producing a crop of absurd measures, 
foolishness and disgrace. Teachers and administrators must sign an oath 
promising that they'll uphold the test's secrecy. Last year a student at 
Atlantic High School took a picture of test pages with his cell phone 
and posted the shots on the Web. Now students are forbidden from 
bringing any kind of electronic device anywhere near their testing zone, 
including music players (which could be very good for the nerves just 
before the test) and phones.

Extreme secrecy combined with intense pressure to perform sooner or 
later tempts rule-breakers, either to flaunt the system or to gain an 
advantage. The student who photographed the test was just jeering at the 
system. The stunt wasn't going to gain the student an advantage. To the 
contrary. He was found out, and his test invalidated. We can't know, 
until they're found out, that more serious breaches aren't taking place.

And what about the state's own disgrace in all this? Two years ago a 
lawsuit by a Democratic lawmaker revealed that many of the temporary 
workers hired to score the test had no specialties in the field or no 
bachelor's degrees, including a video store clerk and a janitor. Last 
year blunders were discovered in the third-grade reading tests 
administered in 2006, leading to a deceptively historic spike (or drop) 
in grades, depending on which year's results were analyzed. As for 
actual errors in specific questions -- it's impossible to know what 
those may be. Judging from the history of standardized testing, the only 
certainty is that errors sometimes happen, but get corrected through 
transparency. The FCAT doesn't do transparency.

Under pressure from parents and schools the state publishes a few 
samples from past tests on its Web site -- but very few. The tests are 
helpful. But they're not a substitute for fuller disclosure. The state 
can't honestly argue that it cannot demand more openness from its 
testing company, British-based Pearson, even for a few dollars more (not 
when its legislators are proposing to increase by $150 million a dubious 
corporate tax credit that underwrites private-school vouchers). The 
company should be compelled to do what profits Florida students most. 
Transparency does. Currently inane levels of secrecy do not.

   
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opnOPN20031208.htm