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State Board of Education's Testing Snow Job
 

January 9, 2004

Appropriately, it is snowing in NC. Must be part of the latest snow job the North Carolina State Board of Education (SBE) is dumping on North Carolina's students and taxpayers. The following is the sunshine version of HSP5 (you can find the complete shenanigans at the DPI web site ( www.dpi.state.nc.us - go to state school board Jan 04 meeting executive summaries).

As most of you have probably ascertained, the NC End of Year Tests (AKA ABC test scores) used to determine the number of public schools showing academic progress have been dumbed down. Last year's fantastic increase in test scores is a testament to the ingenious method of using a sliding scale to determine student achievement. What is probably lost in the hoopla about the inflated ABC scores is that a statistical confidence interval is employed to help those unable to jump over the lowered academic bar. This means that if you almost passed your math test you pass it anyway - the horseshoe version of "I am confident I would have passed that math test had I only studied - so that 55 should be counted as a 60 because I had a bad test day because I felt bad about not having studied."

Yesterday, The State Board of Education has confidently decided to use this confidence ploy when assessing Adequate Year Progress (AYP). SBE is now doubly confident that many more schools will pass The No Child Left Behind AYP evaluation. So after the confidence interval is applied to the lowered standards of the ABC test, those test results will be used to measure a school's Adequate Yearly Progress and then a confidence interval will be applied so that a school that almost makes AYP will be counted as having made AYP. This tidally hood-winked version of "the whole school failed the math test but they probably had a bad day because they had to take a test on math problems they did not know how to solve" was advertised by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) as being capable of lowering the number of public schools that failed to make AYP from 57% to 47%. Only one SBE member questioned the integrity of using these tactics - eventually, she also supported the charade.

If only the SBE had the courage to make all of this retroactive: I would have gotten a 1600 on my SAT scores, would have gone to Harvard and confidently left during my freshman year to start Microsoft. I will now confidently apply some extra integers to my checkbook.

The saddest part is that the children who are shortchanged on their education will end up working in restaurants that use cash registers where they do not need to know how to make change.
The second saddest part is that other states will copy this test grading ploy and that the Department of Education in Washington is approving this test scoring foolishness.
 

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