White Pulls a Dead Rabbit Out of His Hat!
I sent this letter to all BESE members along with various and sundry other people today.
On July 1, during the BESE special meeting, it was stated several times that "teachers don't get to see the iLEAP or LEAP tests and parents can't see the tests after administration," so it would not be a problem to administer the 2013/14 tests again in 2014/15, Louisiana Supt. John White made the surprise announcement that in fact the 2013/14 tests were found on the LDE website. Because no one has ever seen these tests and they have never been released before in their entirety, it was conjectured that White devised this event literally on the spot and so as to then prevent the proposed re-use of the test in 2014/15.
I decided to check out his claims so went to the link provided and opened the 7th grade ELA test. Below are my observations which show without a doubt that these are NOT the tests administered and furthermore are useless for analysis because they are incomplete. I might add that this test is far from "rigorous" for 7th grade and I can't believe they were actually the test questions nor aligned to CCSS.
I ask that BESE members hold White accountable for this boldface lie which contributed to the negative vote on the motion offered up by Jane Smith.
7th grade ELA 2013-14 released test
1. Notice in the rush to release the test the second prompt was copied twice. "newspaper Articles from the 2000s"
2. Notice the Directions for Writing indicate this is to be handwritten. Weren't the tests done on line this year?
3. Notice the article from the magazine Science Today "Amazing Insects" is from February 1999. Do they really think a science article this old is appropriate for a science test?
4. Page from website BugBiz.com, says it was accessed 2004 (again outdated science? Also this section must be done on line Geaux Teacher!: White Pulls a Dead Rabbit Out of His Hat!: