No bottom line
New York City’s experiences in the last couple weeks reinforce my belief that the notion that we can “hold public schools accountable for results” is questionable.
No one bought the district’s announcement that test scores have dramatically improved. And why should they have? The doubters seem to understand that politicians who pledge to raise student achievement are heavily motivated to make it appear that they’ve raised student achievement—even if they really haven’t.
What puzzles, though, is that this sage observation seems to have died at the doorsteps of Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein. The skeptics blame these particular politicians as if the perverse incentive to varnish test scores afflicted only certain snaky individuals rather than all holders of public office. Why is that? Why when public servants invariably fall prey to the sinister tug of politics do we blame the individuals and never politics?
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July 3rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Do you know why teachers in New York state score their own students’ tests (what the history of this decision is)?
Having dealt with NY state testing as a parent for several years now, I would vote for a return to the TONYSS (Test of New York State Standards), which was machine scored. My district dropped the TONYSS as soon as the NCLB tests came in. We need machine-scored tests & we probably need 3rd party test administration to boot (although cheating doesn’t appear to be a problem in my own high-performing district.)
In our child’s case the problem is score deflation, not score inflation. Our child scores very well on the ITBS & the ISEE (98th percentile verbal, 90th percentile math) but earns 3s on the state tests.
Score deflation is not a good thing. Given the fact that the administration here is philosophically committed to heterogeneous grouping and to the elimination of accelerated courses in K-8 (and, I assume, in the high school as well), I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the district has an incentive to be “tough” in scoring.
If everyone is a “3,” then everyone belongs in the same class together, working on the same material (”differentiated,” of course).
However, I may be looking at the wrong level of analysis. The state tests themselves appear to have a tiny range for a score of “4.” I haven’t taken the time to look at this year’s tests, but last year’s tests had a tiny difference between 3s and 4s.
To illustrate, in both years our child had subscale scores in the 90s (on a scale of 1 to 100), which was “above the SPI Target range.” For example, the Target Range for “Language for Information and Understanding” is 72-84; our child scores 96. This is true of his performance on every subscale. And yet he ends up with a “3.”
Why would that be?
Why would you design a state test with no upper range?
I’d like to know.