Who did better on Georgia standardized test: online or paper?
Georgia students who took their standardized state tests online last year did no worse or better than peers who took it on paper, unlike the experience of test takers in some other states.
Students who took computerized tests given by a consortium of states tended to do worse than peers who took it on paper, Education Week reported. The consortium, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, comprises nine states and other jurisdictions that collaborated on shared standards and tests for math and English.
Georgia withdrew from the partnership in 2013, then created its own tests, known as the Milestones, first given last year. Melissa Fincher, who oversees testing for the Georgia Department of Education, said through a spokesman that analyses of those 2015 results indicated that Georgia students were neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by the “mode” in which they took the Milestones, whether online or on paper.
The analyses were reviewed by Georgia’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), which comprises six national measurement experts, Fincher said. “Ultimately Georgia’s TAC concluded that the analyses did not yield evidence of a mode effect.”
There has been no review yet of the 2016 Milestones taken this spring.
About the Author
Ty Tagami is a staff writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Since joining the newspaper in 2002, he has written about everything from hurricanes to homelessness. He has deep experience covering local government and education, and can often be found under the Gold Dome when lawmakers meet or in a school somewhere in the state.
