Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Thursday, March 16, 2006
Test companies flunking out?
It’s been a bad week for the testing industry, but then again this is the heavy time for test administration and scoring. And the industry appears to be buckling under the pressure.
First Pearson Measurement, the company that scores the SAT, acknowledged they had messed up the scores on at least 4,000 answer sheets.
Now my colleague Mark Fisher updates a story he wrote about last year in which a scoring mistake on a professional qualifying exam actually cost teachers their jobs. And now Education Testing Service has been ordered to pay $11 million in damages to some of the teachers who were harmed. Here’s the New York Times’ take on it, too.
And the Times also reports that CTB McGraw Hill, another huge testing company, accidentally included sample test questions students had already seen on 400,000 New York state exams. Now they have to toss those questions and try to readjust the scoring to account for fewer questions.
How confident are you that your child’s test scores are going to be correct?
Permalink | | Categories: Testing
A hug, kiss and frisk for junior
The Philadelphia city schools are asking parents in that district to check their kids pockets for contraband before sending them to school. This comes after a couple discoveries of drugs at schools, but school officials say the pocket check can be a big help keep forbidden items, ranging from weapons to toys, out of schools.
Is this a sensible request or have Philly school leaders gone over the edge?
Permalink | | Categories: The Parent-Teacher Divide
