After all the ruckus over the original NYC third-grade reading exams, you'd have expected quality control on the makeup exam to be especially tight.
Oops.
For the second time in as many months, city educators botched the standardized reading exam; this time distributing a test where the questions failed to match the answer key.
The blunder comes on the heels of last week’s discovery that thousands of students in grades three, five, six and seven unknowingly studied for the original English Language Arts exam utilizing last year’s exam. Department of Education officials said a 20-question passage from the 2003 test was repeated this year, providing certain students with an unfair advantage.
Those students, including about 85 third graders from PS 174 in Rego Park, were told they had to either retake the test or accept a grade scored without the 20 questions—an option approximately 650 students accepted.
A total of 2,400 students took the makeup exam last Wednesday, including 1,300 third graders, whose promotions rest upon a passing grade. However, moments into the exam, instructors noticed that questions did not correspond with the answer booklets...
Despite the confusion, administrators continued with the test, instructing students to circle the answers directly on the test booklet...education officials said they do not expect to invalidate the scores.
Harcourt Assessment, which isn't having the best year, quality-wise, is taking responsibility for the errors. The critics are now screaming for the test results to be invalidated and for students to be assessed only on classroom performance. I don't blame the critics for being upset, but classroom grades aren't exactly standardized and unbiased (nor can they be assumed to be error-free), and grades aren't a useful measure for putting every NYC third-grader on the same reading continuum.
I'm just really, really happy that I don't work for either Harcourt or the NY DOE right now.
Posted by kswygert at May 21, 2004 01:57 PM