Flawed exams support phony school accountability | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

Flawed exams support phony school accountability | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:

Flawed exams support phony school accountability

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Joel Page

Jesse Grace scans shipments and they arrive Wednesday, July 24, 2013 at the Measured Progress test processing facility in Dover, N.H.

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By Maureen Downey

Robert Schaeffer is public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest).

He wrote this after reading AJC reporter Heather Vogell's series on testing flaws. The "Testing the Test" series took a year to report and concluded today. You can read it at MyAJC.com.

By Robert Schaeffer

 With each passing year, politicians put more weight on standardized exams to evaluate students, teachers and schools.  From “No Child Left Behind” to “Race to the Top” to the new “Common Core Assessments,” test scores have become the primary tool to make high-stakes educational decisions.

As the recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative series demonstrates, however, many of those exams are severely flawed.  Poorly written questions, inaccurate answers, faulty scoring rules, and other major problems undermine the validity of test results.

Reliance on test results, whether flawed or accurate, often leads to inappropriate decisions. Some students are denied promotion to the next grade because of test scores. Others lose out on high school diplomas because they “failed” a state exam. They are then blocked from access to further education and employment. Without the tools to contribute to society, they risk falling into the criminal justice system. This