Grading Problems With Regents Exams Delay Some Diplomas.

[elleng]

Hundreds of seniors graduating this week across New York City have yet to receive their high school diplomas because of problems in the city’s new high-tech system of grading state Regents exams.

In the past, teachers graded their own students’ tests, spending days poring over questions about “King Lear” and the French Revolution.

But the state, concerned that some teachers might be grading too easily, recently ended that practice, and city officials turned to a modern solution: scanning the finished exams and sending them randomly to teachers throughout the city to grade.

The computer system, created by McGraw-Hill Education as part of a $9.6 million contract over three years, broke down this week, leaving students and teachers anxiously awaiting results. Passing grades on Regents exams in English, science, math and history are required for graduation in most public high schools. Students can retake an exam even after the school year ends in order to get a diploma; the next round of tests is given in August.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/nyregion/grading-problems-with-regents-exams-delay-some-diplomas.html?hp

[mbperrin]

1. This is what it costs to distrust teachers: $10 million and

disappointment for students who would like their diplomas on time.

Let's see - the problem? Teachers MIGHT be grading too easily, based on what? A Ouija board?

So the solution to easy grading is to copy the exams and let all the easy graders grade each others' students' exams! Brilliant? And it only costs $10 million to make some photocopies and stick them in teachers' boxes! Bravo!

Being from Texas, it's always heartening to see some other state indulging greedy private businesses at the expense of their own citizens!

[Igel]

2. Probably distributions, benchmarks, later achievement.

If two groups of kids both have GPAs of 3.8, one goes to SUNY and 90% of them graduate in 4 years while the second goes to community colleges and 40% of them fail out in 2 years, perhaps the GPA isn't meaningful.

If one group starts in with calculus or above while the other group, having gotten the same grades in the same math classes, struggles with remedial algebra, perhaps the course grades aren't meaningful.

Both should be, if the courses are the same.

My district uses benchmarks. If my kids' course average is 89 and another teacher's is 79, but her kids do 10 points higher on the benchmark that's aligned with standards and the scope and sequence, I'm going to be talked to.

[mbperrin]

3. They already specified they just had a "feeling" some teachers might be

too lenient.

I don't know anyone who tracks later achievement at all, much less a longitudinal study like the one you propose.

Our district gives benchmarks, too. One year, they used the wrong key, and no student got more than 10% correct. Instead of alarm bells, they blithely gave the scores to students two days before the state exams, so they could despair of their chances of passing.

Really complicated, of course - the test said form A, and the key said form D after I had to threaten mayhem in order to get one.

Damage was done - the administrator failed upward, of course, as they always do - he's now the CATE director for a local college.