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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > March > 14 > Entry
Tests scores as wrong answers
How easy is it for a testing company to mess up your child’s score? A humid day, a lightly filled bubble or a thousandth of an inch alignment problem could change an SAT score or an Ohio Graduation Test result.
Mark Fisher and I wrote today about Pearson Measurement, the company that scores the SAT and most of Ohio’s state tests. Last week, the College Board announced that 4,000 SATs tests had scoring errors. Today, the New York Times reports 1,600 more SATs that should have been rechecked were not.
Here’s a little flavor from our story:
…the SAT problems were caused by humidity in the rainy northeastern U.S. that slightly swelled the paper size of some answer sheets. Most scoring sheets from those areas were not affected, only those with bubbles that were filled in lightly or incompletely. For those, the registration of the scoring machine was off just slightly, enough to miss bubbles that had been marked.
“They were off by just a fraction — a thousandth of an inch,” Hakensen said.
Companies like Pearson are under enormous pressure in the NCLB era. There simply are not enough companies doing test scoring and not enough testing experts for these companies to hire now that nearly ever state is creating more tests to meet the demands of NCLB. That means mistakes like this are likely going to be made more frequently and parents are going to have to watch their child’s scores carefully.
If something seems out of line with your child’s score compared to their prior test results, ask questions. Appeal for the test to be re-scored.
Testing technology in the U.S. simply is not what it could be. The process of test creation, setting passing scores and grading all have serious flaws and can result in scores that can be misleading.
Standardized tests are useful tools. They can give good information about where a child stands compared to other kids their age. But no one test can be relied on to make a total judgment about a child’s academic success, aptitude or intelligence. This SAT mess is just one example why not.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Testing
Comments
By Mary
March 14, 2006 1:59 PM | Link to this
I pointed out some suspicious scores on my son’s Iowa Skills probably about 10 years ago. I found the school district personnel I was directed to generally disinterested and there was no clear way to contact the testing company. Scantron errors are nothing new in the testing industry. As an avid news reader and an engineer, I was very much aware of potential technical problems, tolerances, etc in test scoring and also things like balloting. It was difficult to get anyone’s attention. So how are parents supposed to get the testing company or school’s attention? On top of it we need to be aware of test tampering. That is also hard to prove.