RE: Exemptions to STAR and other standardized testing

To Nancy Barth:

You keep referring to standardized and criterion-referenced tests as opposites. They are not.

In any case, all testing tests "bits and pieces of knowledge". Standardized or not, norm referenced or not, "authentic" (i.e. subjective) or not. Only life tests us holistically. When it is done with testing us, we are done too.

Dredging testing mistakes from across a nation of over 250 milion people, and over many years, does not convince anyone except the innumerates. Frame it in context of error rates, compare it with error rates of subjective assessment, and you will see why.

Curriculum gets dumbed down when there are no standards, or the standards are low or ill-defined. Luckily we do not have this anymore in California. I would be happy if my children were taught to the level of our standards at school. One teaches children to the standards and not to the test. That is why you do not know which standards will be tested in a given year. No test- ever, no teacher - ever, tests all we know. But a well done objective test, tests - with error rates in single digits - if we know what the test is designed to test. And yes, I have seen the test - I sit on the STAR review panel for math. 

Would you like to see an awful example of a meaningless "authentic" test? Go and look at the MARS at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/education/MARS/tasks/g12_1 (used to be avaliable from one of its developers, Michigan State, which now locked the access. Out of shame, I hope :-). You will see an example of a 12th grade math question that tests math at 6th grade level and has incorrect so-called "solutions". Is this what you would like to assess Calif. students with?

But we agree on one thing - the test should be only a part of the assessment. The objective part.