High-Stakes Testing Errors Nationwide Revealed in New Atlanta Journal-Constitution Series
We spend quite a bit of time talking about cheating on standardized tests (even though incidences represent a minute fraction of the number of assessments given in public schools every year). What we don't talk much about are the errors that occur before a student is ever handed a bubble sheet - and after they turn them in.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Heather Vogell has spent the past year examining testing errors nationally, and looking at the impact on students, teachers, schools and districts. The problems revealed in the reporting range from poorly worded assessments to wide-scale errors by testing companies. In some cases, students were wrongly denied high school diplomas based on faulty scores.
The new series is a followup to the newspaper's award-winning "Cheating Our Children" project, which found suspicious test scores both in Atlanta and in districts nationwide. The team's dogged reporting lead to the early retirement of Beverly Hall as Atlanta's schools superintendent. Since then 36 people -- Hall included -- have been indicted on criminal charges.
I asked Vogell if she was prepared for her work to be used as ammunition by opponents of standardized testing, a fight which has been heating up in recent months. She told me that she "knew people who oppose these tests would use this as more evidence of their flaws." However, many of the people she met during the course of her work "don’t say they never want their kids tested. They’re concerned about the quality and implementation. That makes me think there’s some common ground that can be reached on the use of measurement in schools."
There are plenty of lessons to be learned from the series, including how even a
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Heather Vogell has spent the past year examining testing errors nationally, and looking at the impact on students, teachers, schools and districts. The problems revealed in the reporting range from poorly worded assessments to wide-scale errors by testing companies. In some cases, students were wrongly denied high school diplomas based on faulty scores.
The new series is a followup to the newspaper's award-winning "Cheating Our Children" project, which found suspicious test scores both in Atlanta and in districts nationwide. The team's dogged reporting lead to the early retirement of Beverly Hall as Atlanta's schools superintendent. Since then 36 people -- Hall included -- have been indicted on criminal charges.
There are plenty of lessons to be learned from the series, including how even a