"The answer's not here." When the second child raised a hand to tell
me the same
thing, I knew what was coming. One by one, fourteen children would
raise their
hands to tell me that there was no correct answer choice for the
fourth question
on their test. To each child I replied, "This is a tricky question. If
you read
the passage carefully, you will see that one of these answers is
correct." On
this second grade reading test, the four answer choices were numbers.
There was a
number in the text on the preceding page - a different number,
accompanied by a
phrase like "not greater than." One of the four answer choices was
within the
range described by that phrase.
At lunch that day, a colleague described how one of her third graders
beat his
head on the desk and burst into tears before ever picking up a pencil.
He had
just learned that, on the test section they were about to begin, he
had been
given a version with more questions than the version given to some
other students
in the room. To evaluate test items for possible future use,
bureaucrats had
created several versions of the test and prescribed how they were to
be assigned
to students.
If reporters, parents and teachers could assess the quality of the
tests on which
all the statistics about "improvement" and about "failing schools" are
based,
they might be a little less willing to accept test scores as an
accurate
portrayal of student learning.
In California, tests are secret. Even when the scores and API rankings
are
released, months later, the tests are still secret. Some tests items
are
eventually released, but not in a way that has enabled researchers to
say, "This
test score was based on this (possibly flawed) item."
Some of the potential problems I saw in the test given to my second
graders this
week (in addition to the reading question requiring students to choose
X-3 rather
than X+1 or X+10) included:
* A question in which students must choose as the definition of the
word
"fastest" that someone "finished the race first." All my students
are
familiar with Aesop's tale of the hare and the tortoise, in which
the fastest
animal does not finish first.
* A question in which the circles were not aligned with the answer
choices, so
that the circle for the correct answer was halfway between that
answer and
another.
* A question for which a student can only determine the correct
answer if s/he
knows that "Janet" is not a boy's name. Crossing out in his test
booklet all
the wrong answers, one of my students left two names that seemed
to meet the
criteria specified for this question. He did not cross out
"Janet" or a name
that he knew to be a boy's name. So he incorrectly answered that
two boys had
accomplished the task. His error had nothing to do with his
reading ability
or comprehension strategies. It simply revealed a difference
between his
cultural background and that assumed by the test makers.
* A question in which students were asked, "Which sentence is in the
wrong
place in this paragraph?" The answer choices in their entirety
were 1, 2, 3,
and 4. Students had to understand that the paragraph referred to
was the
paragraph preceding the question preceding the question they were
now
answering.
* A question is which a student was to identify what happened on the
"third day
of the week," by which the test makers meant Wednesday. Our
state-adopted
math program teaches that Wednesday is the fourth day of the week.
* This same question was based on a table showing two names beside
each day,
with one name written above the other in the column. Some students
assumed
that the two names were in fact first and last names for one
person, an error
facilitated by the fact that two of the second (first) names are
in fact
common last names, similar to Barry and Johnson. Two other names
appeared to
be Japanese and African, and thus unfamiliar as first or last
names to most
students.
These are just the potential problems noticed by one teacher who gave
the test
over a three-day period last week, returning the test to the school
site test
coordinator each afternoon. How many more inappropriate questions,
formatting
errors, and wrong answers might be found if an interested public were
given a
chance to review the tests?
I noticed two things about the second grade math test.
* For at least nine of 71 test items, the answer was expressed as a
fraction or
was a picture depicting a fraction. This seems like a pretty heavy
emphasis
on fractions for this grade level.
* This year, as in previous versions of the Grade 2 Star, some
students who
know how to subtract three-digit numbers with regrouping will miss
a test
item simply because of the test format and directions. Question
eight
required three-digit addition with regrouping. Before students
began the
problem, the teacher read aloud from the "Directions for
Administration,"
"What is the solution to this problem?" Question nine was in the
same format.
The numbers were changed, and so was the sign. The "Directions for
Administration" required the teacher to read again, "What is the
solution to
this problem?" The first answer choice was the sum of the two
numbers. A
careful student might note that the sign had been changed, and
could have
then gone on to examine the other answer choices to find the
difference
between the two numbers. But it is hard to escape the conclusion
that the
test designers purposely set up students to fail. Knowing that at
least some
students would experience a certain amount of tunnel vision as a
result of
test anxiety, they could have signaled to students that the second
problem
was different from the one before it. It would have been simple to
say, "Find
the sum" and "Find the difference," or even "Add" and "Subtract."
By creating
problems that looked and sounded alike, and by putting the sum
first among
the answer choices for the second question, the test makers
greatly increased
the number of students who would be reported as less than
proficient in
subtraction.
The Grade 2 math test also penalizes students who like to reread
directions,
because they are not given written directions. They must listen to the
teacher
read the directions exactly two times.
George Sheridan