A "really bad test"
Fellow Blogger Daryl Cobranchi tipped me off to a Chicago story about teachers who are boycotting the accountability tests.
Ask Curie High School English teacher Martin McGreal what's wrong with the Chicago Academic Standards Examinations - better known as the CASE - and he doesn't mince words. "It's an indefensible test," he says flatly. "It's not a valid assessment, and it's a huge waste of instructional time."...In September, the members of the group - calling themselves Curie Teachers for Authentic Assessment - sent a signed letter to Chicago schools' CEO Arne Duncan that lays out a detailed, convincing critique of the CASE, a series of exams administered each January and June to freshmen and sophomores in Chicago public schools. The letter concludes by stating matter-offactly that its authors "will not be administering the CASE this year."
The letter can be read here. I believe the letter is indeed a damning indictment of poorly-designed and inappropriate test, although I don't have any additional knowledge of the CASE to back it up. It sounds like the exam is in need of a major overhaul, and the school district has a hot potato in its hands..
The letter also highlights one problem of the accountability tests that are being given across the US. The letter-writers complain that the aim of the test is too low - that it measures only "recall and simple comprehension skills" (and allegedly does a poor job of that). However, the point of the NCLB Act is not to test each child to the limit of their ability, but only to ensure that every child meet a lower bound - that every child be minimally proficient. The problem comes when tests that are designed to measure only minimum competence take up eight entire days of instruction, as does the CASE. If true, that's absolutely ludicrous. The United States Medical Licensure Exam (unofficially known as the medical boards) that are required for the practice of medicine in the US requires only four days of testing. Eight days is enough to wear out any child and throw a serious kink into any curriculum plan.
You don't need hundreds of items and multiple days of testing to properly measure a set of basic skills, if the test is well-designed and follows the state standards. If the state of Illinois needs eight days' worth of test items in order to get a reliable measure of skills for each schoolchild, then the test cannot be well-designed and the items must be mostly junk.