I was in a data cocoon all last week, so I missed the big story: the "make-or-break" reading exams for NYC's third-graders were given on Tuesday the 20th (the math exams will be administered tomorrow). Unsurprisingly, the New York Times ran a lengthy story that depicted every parent as worried about the exams, and practically every student as terrified to the point of physical illness. You mean there isn't a single parent out there worth quoting who supports the exam? Gee, no bias there! (The Daily News, on the other hand, led off the first post-test article with a quote from a confident student).
Interestingly, there's already a big flap about the re-use of items on the exam:
The city's test-maker yesterday defended its practice of repeating questions on its exams from year to year - making the program more susceptible to the type of security breaches that occurred on Tuesday's high-stakes reading test - because it's cheaper than designing a whole new exam...
...a scandal erupted this week after it was discovered that students at a handful of schools got an advance look at questions and answers on Tuesday's reading exam.
It turns out that school staffers with copies of last year's exam gave the questions to the students during practice sessions. Some of the questions reappeared on Tuesday's test, giving the students an unfair advantage.
Stirring the controversy even more, this is the first year where the third-grade test results will largely determine whether a student gets promoted.
The test developers have defended the anchor items (which are indeed common in this type of exam), but it's easy to see why the critics insist some kids might have an advantage. There are legitimate reasons to re-use test items - the anchor items allow for comparison of cohorts from year to year - but when items are re-used, it's crucial to keep the old test forms secure. So principals have been ordered to confess if they let students see copies of old exams, and in a bit of bizarre humor, the makeup exams for students who missed the test were cancelled after one TV station ran a close-up of the test at the behest of testing critics:
Close-up images of the third-grade test booklet were shown yesterday on NY1 News, the news cable station, and possibly on other local stations, as part of a news conference held by critics of standardized testing, who have been among the most vocal opponents of the mayor's tough promotion rules.
At the news conference, the testing critics complained that at least three full reading comprehension passages and at least a dozen questions on this year's third-grade reading test were identical to last year's exam. They said that many schools had used last year's exam for practice purposes, giving some students an unfair advantage.
Although some parents had said they would keep their children home in protest against the test, the vast majority of the city's 76,000 third graders took the exam on Tuesday. City officials said 98.2 percent of third-graders attended school that day.
Still, officials said that showing parts of the test on television was enough of a security breach to require them to cancel makeup exams that would have been given this week or next Monday and that students would have to wait until after next Tuesday's math test for a special makeup version of the reading test.
The city might sue, claiming copyright infringement. As for those critics, Josh Plotnik of the Cornell Sun - no fan of standardized tests - is having none of their claims:
I've never been a particular fan of standardized tests of any kind. Even as a soon-to-be graduate student, I've never done exceptionally well on the SATs or the GREs -- I'm pretty confident that a NYC third grader could surpass my first GRE verbal score. Standardized exams test irrelevant information, attempt to deceive you, and force you to be so scared of never succeeding in life that you dread taking any exam at all. And yet, I find myself adamantly supporting Bloomberg's new "hold back" policy.
If I can't correctly pair a ridiculously ill used word with its antonym, I may still become a good doctor or professor or President of the United States. But if I can't read, then how successful could I possibly become? Elementary school teachers are bound to be somewhat biased in their grading, and so a uniform test of reading skills seems necessary and appropriate.
The NYC third grade English exam was created to test third grade reading skills, not to trick third graders into abandoning their career goals.
Plotnik then reports that City Councilman Charles Barron "claimed the reading exam favored white children, and that the entire test was racist." Because we can't expect black children to know how to read and answer test items? Why not? I can't think of anything but racism that would explain such a willingness to excuse any poor test scores on the part of minority students. Much better to continue to allow their schools to continue failing them, I suppose.
All this, and there aren't even any reading scores yet. Sheesh.
Posted by kswygert at April 26, 2004 04:32 PM