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Blog: FCAR
Speakout
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Give parents full access to test
results
Ft. Myers News-Press
May 25, 2005
The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test has been a valuable tool for forcing
basic improvements in education, but the state should stop treating the results
and the scoring methods like military secrets.
With something this enormously important to students and schools, records and
procedures should be an open book.
Parents and students should have the right to review individual tests to see
exactly where the students did well and where they did poorly, and to
double-check the scoring for accuracy.
This has been resisted by the state for eight long years now because of the cost
of coming up with new test questions if the old ones are made public. It's a
poor reason. These tests should be revised and refined each year anyway, and
made more challenging where appropriate.
Several states release completed assessment tests to their students and parents.
Some provide a clear explanation of the manner in which the tests are scored,
something else Florida fails to do.
It's not simply a matter of the number of questions a student gets correct.
Answers are also weighted depending on their difficulty. This may well be a good
way to measure ability, but it should and can be explained so parents and
students can understand what their test score means.
The FCAT is probably over-emphasized, but we support its continued use as part
of the assessment mix. It has been crucial to raising standards and resisting
the anti-accountability culture.
But there is no excuse for this obsessive secrecy, which undermines the
usefulness of the test and public confidence in it. Urge our leaders in
Tallahassee to make these issues public.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050525/OPINION/505250366/1015
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