This article this morning only partially explains why
district superintendents are not satisfied with the foot dragging by State
Superintendent White in producing vital PARCC test data. The issue is about
much more than just determining the best format for reporting test results to
the schools and to the parents.
Over the weekend, White sent district superintendents an
email memo attempting to justify the long delays in producing data. Also in apparent exasperation White pointed out that for the first time, local superintendents asked that he produce the raw student scores. Well here is the back-story to all this secrecy and intrigue at the LDOE and why the raw scores have never before been reported.
This blog in several posts based on public records requests has exposed mounting evidence
that White and his staff and the testing companies have systematically been
lowering the passing scores on almost all of the state accountability tests. Here
are some examples: 39% on the 7th grade math test and 41% on the 8th
grade math test is considered passing according to the cut score. Geometry is
down to only 32% for passing.
The cut score setting process is made to look like its only about making small
adjustments that are needed to make sure that various test forms are compatible based on test
difficulty. But the changes can add up to huge differences in the number of
students being rated as performing on grade level and even in passing the
end-of-course tests in recent years. The same could very well be true of the
new PARCC test. That’s why the raw scores are important. You can’t tamper with
the actual percentage of correct answers the students got on the tests unless
you want to go to jail like the educators in Atlanta are doing. But you can
easily manipulate the scale test scores and accomplish the same results.
Our superintendents, principals and teachers have been
busting their butts the last few years to raise test scores even though they
know in their hearts that it is killing all the joy of teaching and learning.
You would think that they would be happy to quietly go along with getting a
little help from the cut score setting process. It turns out that they have too
much integrity to go along with this sleazy process. They feel that if we are
going to test our students into the ground we at least owe them and their
parents an honest analysis of how they really did on the tests. That’s what the
raw score tells us. It is simply the old fashioned way of reporting the actual
percentage of correct answers the student got on the test. What could be simpler than that? Now
later if the LDOE comes up with different forms of the test that have different
difficulty they can use scale scores to level the playing field.
There is another big reason the test scores are being
delayed. From all indications so far in other states, this PARCC test is a
very, very bad test. It will produce very, very low raw scores. It is also a
major indication that some of the Common Core standards are not well thought
out, are not age appropriate, and are simply too impractical to test. White and
his groupies in the business community, who are being totally duped, don’t want
anything negative to come out about the PARCC and the CCSS especially before
the BESE elections. But how can so called educators such as White and his bunch
be against finding out the truth about this whole new untested rushed out
program. Why can’t we fix what’s wrong for the benefit of our students?
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