A New Idea For Test-Based Accountability In DC: Actual Test Scores
The Washington Post reports on an issue that we have discussed here on many occasions: The incompleteness of the testing results released annually by the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), or, more accurately, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), which is responsible for testing in DC schools.
Here’s the quick backstory: For the past 7-8 years or so, DCPS/OSSE have not released a single test score for the state assessment (the DC-CAS). Instead, they have released only the percentage of students whose scores meet the designated cutoff points for the NCLB-style categories of below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. I will not reiterate all of the problems with these cutpoint-based rates and how they serve to distort the underlying data, except to say that they are by themselves among the worst ways to present these data, and there is absolutely no reason why states and districts should not release both rates and average scale scores.
The Post reports, however, that one organization — the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education — was able to obtain the actual scale score data (by subgroup and grade) for 2010-2013, and that this group published a memo-stylereport alleging that DCPS’ public presentation of their testing results over the past few years has been misleading. I had a mixed reaction to this report and the accompanying story.
On the one hand, I give a lot of credit to Broader, Bolder for doing this – for acknowledging the importance of the scale scores, for going to the trouble of requesting them, and then for publishing them in full. By so doing, this Shanker Blog » A New Idea For Test-Based Accountability In DC: Actual Test Scores: