Submitted by Dee Alpert, Dec 23, 2007 14:07

The gap between NAEP and NYSED test scores is unsurprising for many reasons. Unfortunately, integrity in test administration and scoring is at the bottom of NYSED's priority list, or perhaps one should say that these are not on its list of priorities at all.

When a district is found to have inflated the grades it gives it's students on NYSED's tests (districts grade their own, of course) in all grades including the high school Regents and RCT tests), NYSED merely sends the district and school board a "tch, tch" note. Test scores are not changed in accordance with outside evaluators' findings and, more importantly, districts' and schools' NCLB ratings and report cards remain unamended. Adult cheating on grading pays off very, very well in New York State, a fact which numerous outside audits and reports have corroborated for years. And there's a good reason the feds threw out NYSED's NCLB-mandated tests for ELL kids and students with disabilities.

When NCLB's mandate for testing in grades 3-8 went into effect, NYSED switched from having regional test grading centers to allowing districts grade their own. This despite the fact that NYSED's own research showed that test scores for district-graded exams "skyrocketed," as Newsday pointed out some years ago.

Thus, to assume that the tests themselves, which remain for the rest of NY's students, have meaningful integrity requires a great - and unwarranted - leap of faith. I'll stick to NAEP scores, thank you very much. So should the public.

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