None of the Above
Welcome to the testing season! I’ve been getting feedback from a lot of readers during the last couple of weeks. Prior to this year, most schools (and the SDE) had been fed up with the lack of efficiency and accuracy we had been dealing with from the previous testing company (Pearson). With CTB-McGraw Hill, it hasn’t been much better.
The first set of problems has to do with the physical shipments received by schools. Physical pre-coding of answer sheets has been incorrect. Schools received the wrong amounts of tests. Or tests intended for the wrong district.
The other problems are related to content. Directions are wrong (or misspelled). There are questions with no correct answers. The technology isn’t working correctly.
On top of this, CTB and the SDE won’t be setting cut scores until the second week in July – at the same time as the Vision 2020 Conference.
So tell me, is this supposed to be a valid process to tell us how good our kids are? Our teachers? Our schools?
If you have other stories of testing woe, feel free to share them in the comments.
okeducationtruths 
Testing server crashes when too many computers connect with the testing software, plus some schools cannot connect to the server for CTB/MH/SDE due to firewall issues and connection overload. What I have been able to tell is that the CTB is using one server that has numerous IP addresses (internet phone numbers) that it connects with. Only one problem is that if the load on the server is too high, connections are dropped which a lot of schools and people are reporting. Mind you, as a former IT person, this is beyond boneheaded stupid.
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We crashed!
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I was going to add the nightmares with the computers…And soon our jobs will be on the line for all this. And kids will be flunked on the basis of these tests…lives will be ruined. BUT McG-H will be richer, and that’s all that counts.
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This quote from War Games sums up my thoughts on the effectiveness of the computer testing: http://www.moviesounds.com/wargames/sucks.wav
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Our school shut down all email communication and all computers not being specifically used for testing to try to conserve bandwith as they were unable to stay on-line and connected.
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