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Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Standard-Setting: A Guessing Game
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Board of Education members this week will approve new “cut scores” for the upcoming Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, Georgia’s mandatory, standardized exams given in public elementary and middle schools every Spring.
Because the state curriculum is changing, the tests also must change to reflect new material being taught. This school year, the subject matter changes are occurring in math and science. With new material comes new exams and new testing standards or “cut scores” — the number of correct answers a student needs to pass.
Previously, state officials were loath to release those numbers — not to be confused with scale scores, which are reported to parents — because they said students wouldn’t work hard enough if they knew how many questions they needed to answer correctly. Of course, cut scores had been public information in other states, such as Texas, for years.
A few years ago, my predecessor at Get Schooled, Patti Ghezzi, forced state officials to release cut scores for some state exams, including the third grade reading test, which students must pass to be promoted. Back then, Patti found that correctly answering 42.5 percent, or 17 of 40 questions, allowed pupils to move on to fourth grade.
State officials then agreed to make the standard-setting process transparent by approving cut scores in public — instead of behind closed doors as had been the practice — and releasing the information immediately.
Funny, I can’t seem to find a list of the current cut scores on the state Department of Education Web site, and there’s no listing of the proposed cut scores the State Board of Education is considering, either. Absent this knowledge, does anyone care to guess what they might be?
