The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Test Scorer

[maryf]

http://www.monthlyreview.org/101201dimaggio.php

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Test Scorer

Dan DiMaggio


Standardized testing has become central to education policy in the United States. After dramatically expanding in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act, testing has been further enshrined by the Obama administration’s $3.4 billion “Race to the Top” grants. Given the ongoing debate over these policies, it might be useful to hear about the experiences of a hidden sector of the education workforce: those of us who make our living scoring these tests. Our viewpoint is instructive, as it reveals the many contradictions and absurdities built into a test-scoring system run by for-profit companies and beholden to school administrators and government officials with a stake in producing inflated numbers. Our experiences also provide insight into how the testing mania is stunting the development of millions of young minds.

I recently spent four months working for two test-scoring companies, scoring tens of thousands of papers, while routinely clocking up to seventy hours a week. This was my third straight year doing this job. While the reality of life as a test scorer has recently been chronicled by Todd Farley in his book Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, a scathing insider’s account of his fourteen years in the industry, I want to tell my story to affirm that Farley’s indictment is rooted in experiences common throughout the test-scoring world.1

“Wait, someone scores standardized tests? I thought those were all done by machines.” This is usually the first response I get when I tell people I’ve been eking out a living as a test-scoring temp. The companies responsible for scoring standardized tests have not yet figured out a way to electronically process the varied handwriting and creative flourishes of millions of third to twelfth graders. Nor, to my knowledge, have they begun to outsource this work to India. Instead, every year, the written-response portions of innumerable standardized tests given across the country are scored by human beings—tens of thousands of us, a veritable army of temporary workers.

I often wonder who students (or teachers and parents, for that matter) picture scoring their papers. When I was a student, I envisioned my tests being graded by qualified teachers in another part of the country, who taught the grade level and subject corresponding to the tests. This idea, it turns out, is as much a fantasy as imagining all the tests are being scored by machines.

much more at link above

[hedgehog]

1. You know, here in New York State we had the Regent's Exams

for generations. If you took Reagent's Chemistry,for example, you were expected to do so many labs selected from a list and be able to answer the questions on a test at the end of the year. Everyone knew what the curriculum had to cover. The test questions were drawn from a pool of questions, so you could pretty much figure out what you had to know. English was tested Junior year. You knew that you would be asked to demonstrate that you'd mastered grammar and would have to answer an essay question using examples from the mandated reading list.

Teachers used copies of past years' tests to drill us, but unless you knew the subject, you didn't pass the test. Teachers were reasonable for grading the tests according to the state standard.

Then came No Child Left Behind. First, someone in Albany decided that every kid in the state had to earn a Reagent's diploma. Then they started monkeying with the curriculum. What had been three distinct math courses; algebra, geometry and trigonometry; were mashed into Math 1, Math 2, etc. I think that there have been problems with the tests every year since the reform. Teachers are appalled to see questions on the tests covering items that were never on the curriculum.

Then, some genius decided that instead of four separate courses, Biology and Earth Science should be a single 2 year course and Chemistry and Physics a second. Fortunately, that genius was stopped.

The upshot is that the Regent's diploma has been devalued, and kids aiming for college are taking AP courses instead.

[maryf]

2. The crazy stuff

Here in NY (I'm a teacher here too) is that, on one hand, they are talking about doing away with most of the Regents tests in order to save money, and on the other hand, require teacher evaluations be based 20% on state assessment tests...insane. They just want to go all charter, and Cuomo isn't a help at all there.

[salvorhardin]

3. That's not quite true about the math portion of the Regents curriculum

It used to be that Regents math was as you described. Then sometime in the 1970s they switched to what was called a "spiral" or integrated curriculum. Regents Course I, II & III taught all three subjects (and more) at once, with each year building upon the previous. That was in place at least through the late 1980s, after which they had the really asinine (IMHO), Math A, Math B, Pre-Calc curriculum. I tutored a friend's son through this and recall it being seriously messed up with kids being asked to do work before they had the required foundational knowledge and skills. Now they're back to the old-fasioned algebra, geometry and trig curriculum.

You're quite correct about the Regents diploma becoming devalued though. So sad. Again, IMHO, most high school kids, even the ones aiming for college, are not ready for AP courses and the increased work load that NCLB has brought almost insures they'll have all the retention of a brain-damaged basset hound.

[maryf]

4. Sadly the work load

really doesn't teach them much, there's not a lot of applied knowledge, nor problem solving or critical thinking, no time, as even the AP courses teach to a more rigorous test, IMO. The learning is very compartmentalized, with little cross curricular learning.

[Hawkowl]

5. Wow.

The insanity of no child left a dime and the demonization of unions, and now this?!?! Idiocracy isn't our future, it is our now.

[Starry Messenger]

6. recommend.

[maryf]

7. thanks.

:hi: