Backtracking+on+a+Florida+exam

NYTimes Look it up: "equipercentile equating." It's a theory that uses advanced mathematical computations and formulas to support the shifting of the target of a score (that would show proficiency on state testing) to make the median a passing grade when, having used the old equations, students appeared to be failing. Sounds like politics to me. Every year, since the introduction of NCLB, school districts have had to meet the rigorous demands of earning continually higher student tests scores. Many students perform better on state testing each year, but the changing test strategies do not show this improvment. In fact, students read and write better but their grades on the test are lower. This is not a sound way to motivate students. This is not a sound way to evaluate teachers. The rules of the game are constantly shifting. Who's held accountable for this masqerade? Administrators, and they will lay blame on the teachers. A Florida State Education Department spokeswoman, Jamie Mongiovoi, responded to this 'equipercentile equation' grading stating, "selecting the lower score was intended to limit the impact on schools during the implementation year of this change. Where's the prize for doing well?
 * Abstract**
 * On Education**
 * Backtracking on Florida Exams Flunked by Many, Even an Educator**
 * Published: June 10, 2012**
 * NANCY BROWN**
 * COURSE FNED 502**

**By** [|__**MICHAEL WINERIP**__] Edlexander Rabassa, a high school sophomore in Orlando, Fla., qualified for college credits but failed a reading competency test. All students take practice tests in math, reading and writing in September and December. Heather Flay’s fourth graders at Crystal Lake Elementary keep folders with their test results so they can chart which scores need improving. “We have them show their folders to their parents,” Ms. Flay said. “They’ll say, ‘This is what my scores were in third grade, this is where I was in September and this is what I’m shooting for.’ ” Terri Ganey, an English teacher here at Seminole High, spends several days having her students analyze the Florida Department of Education’s samples of graded essays so they understand what it takes to earn a top score of 6 — or a 5 or 4. “We dissect the state’s scoring rubric, level by level,” Ms. Ganey said. “We even look at the lowest levels, so they see this is why it was a 1 or 2, what was missing.” The extensive test preparation has paid off. In 2011, among the state’s 67 districts, Seminole (which serves 64,000 students, half of whom qualify for federally subsidized lunches) ranked third in math, fourth in reading and sixth in writing. Then, last month, the state dropped a bomb. The 2012 scores on the writing test — given to 4th, 8th and 10th graders — plummeted in all districts. Only 27 percent of Florida’s fourth graders were rated proficient, compared with 81 percent the year before. In Seminole, 30 percent were proficient, down from 83 percent. Something snapped in Dr. Vogel. “We’ve all worked so hard to make sure the state testing system is credible and meaningful, but we’ve reached the tipping point,” he said. “The whole system needs to be readdressed.” The numbers fell so drastically because, as announced last summer, state officials toughened the standards, paying more attention to grammar and spelling as well as to the factual accuracy of supporting details in essays. But they did not change the scoring system, resulting in a public relations disaster. What to do? They could live with the results — that after 15 years of education reform, three-fourths of Florida children could not write. Or they could scale the results upward after the fact, an embarrassment, but people probably would not be so angry if they had good scores. The high failure rate was based on measuring proficiency as a score of at least 4. First, the state considered lowering the cutoff to 3.5. That would have resulted in a passage rate of about 50 percent. People would probably still be angry. So on May 15, Florida’s education commissioner, [|__Gerard Robinson__], held an emergency conference call with State Education Board members, while 800 school administrators from all over Florida listened in. The board voted to lower the cutoff to 3. Presto! Problem solved. The proficiency rate for fourth graders was now exactly what it had been in the 2010-11 school year, 81 percent. For 10th graders, the results actually improved, to 84 percent from 80 percent, meaning scores plummeted but proficiency increased. For those like Dr. Vogel who think proficiency should reflect the mastery of a specific set of skills rather than the score that pops up after state officials wiggle things around, this was distressing. “Making an arbitrary change without finding out what happened could result in people losing confidence in accountability,” he said. Though this may be the worst breakdown in 15 years of state testing, it does not appear that Florida politicians have any interest in figuring out who was responsible. The commissioner? Department officials? Someone at Pearson, the company that scored the writing tests? The [|__Buros Center for Testing__], the consultant the state pays $100,000 to do annual audits, wrote that there was nothing to worry about, concluding that the scoring “was in keeping with the best practices of the profession.” (Imagine what the worst practices are.) The audit referred to lowering the passing score to 3 as “equipercentile equating.” In an e-mail, Jamie Mongiovi, a State Education Department spokeswoman, wrote that no further investigation was planned. She said that selecting the lower score was intended “to limit the impact” on schools “during the implementation year of this change.” “Each time Florida raises the academic bar, our students have improved their academic performance,” Ms. Mongiovi wrote. “The number of schools receiving A grades has increased after an initial dip. Supporting higher standards and achievement is in the best interest of our learners.” Former Gov. Jeb Bush, who was in office from 1999 to 2007, put into effect what may be the most aggressive testing system in the country, and subsequent administrations have followed his lead. Test scores are used to determine which third graders must be retained and which high school students can graduate. They determine a school’s report card grade, from A to F, as well as which teachers and principals will get bonuses and which ones will be fired. While it is unlikely that there will be significant changes any time soon, there are signs of cracks. Two weeks after the writing results were announced, Broward County, the sixth-biggest school district in the nation, became one of 10 in Florida to pass the [|__National Resolution on High Stakes Testing__], calling for a reduced role of standardized tests in public education. The [|__state superintendents’ association__] is expected to take up the issue this week. “Problems with the writing test are far and away the worst ever in terms of the impact on the credibility of FCAT” — the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test — said Bob Schaeffer, the public education director for [|__FairTest__], a national antitest group. Last year, Rick Roach, 63, a member of the Orange County School Board in Orlando, attracted national attention when he took the state’s reading competency test, and then admitted to having failed it. Mr. Roach, who has two master’s degrees, believes that the test — which was flunked by about half of high school students — is a poor measure of a child’s reading ability. He has produced a video that features eight students who failed it, reading aloud flawlessly. “They can read,” he said, “they just can’t pass.” This is the case for Edlexander Rabassa, a sophomore at Colonial High School in Orlando. Last year, as a ninth grader, he earned a score of 3 out of a possible 5 on the A.P. Human Geography exam, qualifying him for college credits. He had always scored proficient in the state reading tests, which are administered from third to eighth grade. Yet this year he failed the reading competency exam required to graduate. Mr. Roach would like to see whether top state officials could pass the test. In an e-mail, Ms. Mongiovi wrote that she was not aware of any who had taken it, but she did not answer a question about whether they would be willing to. The results could be entertaining. The week after the writing test mess, the department sent out a media advisory announcing the next round of test scores. It was titled — and you can’t make this stuff up — “Department of Eduation to Release Reading and Mathmetics Results.” //This is my last education column. Again. The first time, in the early 1990s, politicians wanted to make our system more like Japan’s. (This was right before the Japanese economic collapse.)// //A decade later, they devised a system to punish teachers if every child in America wasn’t academically proficient. Now they’re developing a standardized test to evaluate high school band teachers. And through it all, teachers have continued to educate children, and children have continued to learn.// //Come fall, I will start a new assignment.//
 * On Education**
 * New York TImes**
 * Backtracking on Florida Exams Flunked by Many, Even an Educator**
 * Published: June 10, 2012**
 * SANFORD, Fla. — Bill Vogel, the superintendent of schools in this suburb of Orlando, has always been vigilant about preparing his district for the state tests.