The standardized testing version of 12 Angry Men is 72 Standard Setters:
About six dozen people whom you have never met sequestered themselves in a suburban motel late last month and decided whether your son and daughter will graduate from high school. Like a jury choosing between guilt and innocence, members of the panel weighed evidence, deliberated in private, agreed on a conclusion and then parted ways.But instead of determining responsibility for a particular piece of mayhem or murder, these citizens gave their time to decide the grading scale for the new Ohio Graduation Test, which students will have to pass before leaving high school to get a diploma...
The public usually learns of pass-fail scores for state tests - or "cut scores," in education lingo - when those scores first come before the State Board of Education. That will happen next Tuesday, when the committee's recommendations are considered by the 19-member state board. Whatever pass-fail scale the board eventually adopts will be used to score the test that the state's 10th-graders took in March.
But most Ohioans - including most teachers and administrators - have little idea of the process that determines the thin line between passing and failing.
But I'm sure they realize that, as Arizona State University researcher Gene Glass says, once the committee derives the criterion-referenced cutscore, the state gets to "fiddle" with it to get a standard that is politically popular (and yes, this does make it more of a norm-referenced cutscore at that point).
Posted by kswygert at May 3, 2005 11:15 AM