79°
Bob Schaeffer of FairTest — an organization that advocates against the “misuse” of standardized tests — says the time has come to release FCAT exams, in the name of transparency.
“The politicians and the testing companies are saying ‘Trust us,’” Schaeffer said. “There’s an awful lot of reasons not to.”
In the realm of college admissions tests, there is less secrecy — all SAT exams are eventually made public through practice tests, and about half of SAT exams in a given year are made available following students’ completion of the tests. And in New York State, a bipartisan bill was recently filed in the Legislature that would require K-12 tests to be released too. It’s too soon to predict if that legislation will pass.
Etters, the Florida education spokeswoman, said releasing FCAT exams would add considerable time and expense to producing the tests — forcing test writers to come up with an entirely new batch of questions each year, instead of the existing practice of using some questions repeatedly.
The current system, with its various stages of review, strikes “a good balance,” Etters said.
Florida already spends considerable sums on testing — the state has a five-year $254 million contract with London-based Pearson to manage its FCAT exams.
Only one FCAT Science test, an 8th-grade exam from 2007, has ever been publicly released. Krampf says that test is far from perfect.
One question on the test, which Krampf questioned state leaders about, involved a hypothetical experiment using a glass of tea. Students were told to use tea bags, sugar, water, and stirring rods, and were asked what variables must stay the same to maintain the integrity of the results. The state’s “correct” answers were the amount of tea, sugar and water.
Krampf asked: what about the amount of time spent stirring the tea? Surely, that must stay the same. Would a student get credit for writing that?
Florida’s Department of Education initially replied that it was “highly likely” that students who answered “stirring” would have been marked correct. But when Krampf asked for the guidelines given to test graders, to verify that stirring was accepted, the state effectively ended the conversation.
“Unfortunately, I do not have easy access to the documents you are requesting,” wrote Sharon Koon, director of Florida’s office of assessment. “To do so, I would need to pull staff off of critical work tasks to provide the answers to your questions.”
Responses like that have left Krampf convinced that the state’s top priority is protecting the FCAT, rather than making sure the test accurately evaluates what students have learned.
“I don’t know that they’re really seriously evaluating anything,” he said.
RSS
My Yahoo