Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

High stakes

When grading errors can cost students their futures, the Department of Education must hold accountable the companies hired to score tests.

When the moisture content in a test answer sheet can keep a student from attending college, education officials across the nation need to quit denying the obvious. The explosion of high-stakes testing is producing grading errors with unthinkable consequences.

The latest disclosure comes from Pearson Education Management, no stranger to test mistakes, that the scores for some 5,000 high school students taking the SAT in October were wrongly reported. Roughly 90 percent of those students actually had higher scores than originally reported, some as much as 450 points higher. Pearson said computer scanners had trouble with moisture in the answer sheets, leading to the wrong scores.

This is not the first problem for Pearson, which scored 300-million different answer sheets for all types of tests last year. In Minnesota, it offered a $7-million settlement for 8,000 high school students who were wrongly denied their diplomas. It also has admitted significant scoring errors in Washington and Virginia and to the loss of some FCAT answer sheets in Florida.

Unfortunately, this is also part of a growing pattern of mistakes in an industry that, since the advent of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, has grown to $3-billion a year. These mistakes would be regrettable if they merely skewed standardized test trends, but they are unacceptable when they cost students their future. Wrong SAT scores can prevent a student from attending the university of his or her choice and can deny them thousands of dollars in scholarships. Wrong FCAT scores in Florida can deny high school students their diplomas and third-grade students the right to advance to fourth grade.

The solution, according to George F. Madaus, research professor at the Center for the Study of Testing Evaluation and Educational Policy at Boston College, is simple.

"We need accountability," Madaus told the New York Times. "I certainly wouldn't get rid of testing. But we need to be much more aware than we are now about the shortcomings, the limitations and the fallibility of the technology."

That can only begin at the top, at the U.S. Department of Education. The worst part about the discovery of these testing errors is that the companies almost always are in the dark. Not until students complain, or sue, do they look for problems. That's why DOE must insist on some form of independent auditing. The companies hired to score tests must be held responsible, and educators can no longer accept their assurances at face value.

In Florida, the state has been so protective of the secrecy of the FCAT that it has failed to pay sufficient attention to the scoring. After a newspaper disclosed last month that Kelly Services was advertising for $10-an-hour temporary workers to score the writing portion of the FCAT this year, the agency insisted the workers had colleges degrees and half were teachers. But DOE has been slow to respond to Democratic requests for public records that would verify the claims.

If the stakes are going to be high for students, they have to be at least as high for the companies that are profiting.

[Last modified April 2, 2006, 01:23:12]