No pencils needed
A recent story on the use of computers in standardized testing opens with the line, "When the school testing season picks up steam next month, something will be missing in many classrooms - the No. 2 pencil." I may have to change the name of my blog.
Oregon's system of online tests, known as Technology Enhanced Student Assessment, or TESA, has spread from 28 schools in spring 2001 to more than 500 schools this year. Only Idaho and Virginia have ventured as far as Oregon in testing students on computer. In Virginia, about one-fifth of high school students will take their state tests on computer this spring. Idaho has accelerated even faster: More than 90 percent of Idaho students in grades two through 10 will take their state reading and math tests online this spring.
Oregon's standardized achievement tests, given to every student in grades three, five, eight and 10, don't simply measure how well students can read and do math. They also are used to rate teachers, schools and school districts. Each year, the state rates schools on a five-point scale from "exceptional" down to "unsatisfactory," mainly using test scores.
While children seem to prefer the computers, adults fear students will have trouble scrolling back through a long reading passage to answer questions that appear on a separate screen. They worry that students won't figure out how to get back to a question they've skipped. They think having to look back and forth from scratch paper to the computer could stymie young children. But when students actually take a test online, as they have done at Beaverton's Meadow Park Middle School and Elmonica Elementary this year, kids aren't daunted one bit, said Dee Carlton, research specialist for Beaverton schools.
Actually, the concerns about scrolling and going between screen and scratch paper are valid concerns for test takers of any age. It's interesting to see that the kids seem to prefer the computerized versions and have less trouble with some issues than do adults. I've done a great deal of reading, and some research, in the fields of graphical user interface (GUI) design and usability, and I've designed the front end for one major (yet to be implemented) large-scale standardized test. The college age students in my studies were more worried about such issues than these younger test takers seem to be.