Assessment Blunders

Friday shortly before noon I learned from the assistant principal in charge of assessments dropped by my classroom to tell me she would need her help.  It seemed that some of the scoring sheets for the Benchmark tests of two weeks ago were missing for students in my class.  When lunchtime came, I visited her office and found her in a sea of papers paper-clipped in various bundles with notes attached.  I listened carefully as she described what was missing and tried to ignore my frustration.  Having counted and recounted each of the scoring sheets, each of the booklets, and each of the teacher-scored sheets for each of my three grades on each of three tests, I was appalled to see all my bundles dismantled into other bundles and to hear that “some of the students’ scoring sheets and some of my scored sheets were missing.

“I know that they were all there when I turned them in on Monday,” I tried to reply calmly.  She explained that lots of things happen, that the machine sometimes scans two at a time and then one is lost in the process.  She flipped through different bundles, and I spotted two of the sheets we were looking for.  I tried to say where I thought I would look next, and then it took my leave before saying anything I would be sorry for.

Just as my students were setting up for a Friday afternoon Flea Market (an event they hold several times a year), a messenger arrived from the office saying that two children were needed in the office to “retake” a Benchmark test.  A half hour later five more students were called to the office, although two returned quickly, celebrating the fact that their tests had “been found.”  It was a frustrating experience for those whose tests were not found and who missed an important event (to them) in the classroom.

It probably isn’t any one person’s fault.  It must take many many hours and numerous people to go through the process of scanning all the answer sheets and collecting the data.  That office was an overwhelming display of the paper waste that is a constant in this assessment process.  Thousands of sheets of paper—test booklets and teacher’s booklets for scoring and answer sheets and scoring sheets by the hundreds.

Of particular interest in the waste category are the Teacher’s scoring sheets.  Each grade level for each of the three tests—reading, writing and math—is accompanied by a set of scoring sheets for the teacher to use in scoring “constructed responses,” those answers the children write in their test booklets and have to be judged by a reader rather than a machine.  However, the teacher is given a set of scoring sheets with EVERY fourth grader’s name and scoring slots for each item on them, not just that teacher’s own students.  Therefore, each set of scoring sheets, in a school with four or five classes at each grade level, runs to the 20 or more pages, and when one is finished scoring a set, most of the pages are blank because the teacher has filled in the scores for only his or her own students, not the entire fourth grade!

Multiply this waste times three for each group of students in my class on each of three tests, and then multiply that times the three grades that I have.  The wasted paper is sickening.

It is also extremely hard to manage it and keep all the categories straight and all the papers filed properly.  But I did.  I spent a lot of time counting each group and alphabetizing them to make sure none were missing.  And then when they scored them, a handful were missing and the students had to be retested.  I wonder what the validity and reliability of those second round of answers could be.