Creatively Improving Test Scores
The Rochester, New York school district has long ranked very low when it comes to graduation rates and test scores in the nation. When the new School Superintendent arrived in town about a year ago, Jean-Claude Brizard vowed to see both test scores, and the graduation rate, go up. True to his word, test scores did indeed improve. The school district may have found a creative way to do so, but at the same time, it’s created quite a stir. Everyone applauded the district when the latest report showed record gains in test scores on state exams. But, it of course also led to the question of just how did they do it.
The process of raising the test scores, as I already mentioned, has caused quite a stir. As a matter of fact, now Superintendent Brizard is worried that the recent Social Studies fiasco could overshadow the school district’s gains on the state exams.
A couple weeks ago a report came out about a discovery made when it came to study habits for this years Social Studies state exam. It turns out that thousands of 7th and 8th graders were exposed to dozens of questions on their final social studies exam, even before taking the exam. How did this happen? Apparently the review material produced by the Rochester School District for teachers to use, contained actual test questions on the exam. In light of the news, Superintendent Brizard announced this week that he’s contacted area colleges and universities, as well as the legal community, to conduct a top to bottom review of all testing procedures.
Will this be too little too late though? The damage is already done and it leads me to wonder if other school districts are doing the same.
The public education system needs some attention. In the past politicians have thought simply throwing money at the problem would solve everything. But, reality is, that procedure is simply not working. In some cases the kids are running the schools, and teachers no longer know how to teach. Instead, they teach kids to parrot back answers for the state mandated exams. Once you begin that process, it’s a nightmarish downward spiral.
What can be done? There’s no real easy answer, but to say the least, some work does need to be done on the whole educational system.
Just my two cents,
Dr. Rus
Straighten me out here, but were these questions released or stolen and used to prepare students for the test, or was it just that they had learned very similar questions in class and then saw it as repeated information? Honestly, shouldn’t information on an exam be redundant from the yearly lessons and homework and tests,,, basically forming a conglomerate attack on the knowledge and understanding that has been gained over the year?
Thanks.
They were using the actual test that the kids took as the official test later.