School Beat: More on Standardized Testing—Timing is EverythingSusan Goldbyline‚ May. 10‚ 2007In response to Lisa Schiff's recent article titled 'Why I Hate Standardized Testing' I would like to add one more important element to the argument that standardized tests are not adequate measures of student achievement: timing. What if you were taking a class and the final exam was scheduled before the end of the semester? What if it were scheduled after you had attended only 80% of the course? What if the professor told you the reason for this was to enable you to get your results two months later in the middle of your semester break? What if the professors and the college were evaluated on yours and other students’ scores on the final exam? What if an administrator could be fired if the scores were low? Bizarre? Yet that’s the way we do things in California’s public schools. The battery of standardized tests are given within a window of 21 days, no more than 10 days before and ten days after 85% of the school year has passed. In San Francisco we normally begin testing as soon as the window opens. |