Many of you will recall last fall when we celebrated the General Assembly’s passage of the Fairness in Testing Bill as part of the 2001-2002 FY Budget. Well, looks like we celebrated a bit prematurely, at least when it comes to DPI’s love affair with field tests.

 

The first part of Section 28.17 is what passed in October, a law requiring NO field tests in the two-week window preceding EOCs, EOGs, or finals. That was a damn good idea and we applauded it. But it seems that somebody yelled “foul” and thought the meager limit was simply too much to bear. So now we are back where we were: if the State Board decides it needs the field test (and the audit panel implies they need a lot of them to fill in legal vulnerabilities) then your school and my school are going to be field tested, common sense be damned.

 

This mess was brought to my attention by one of our members who teaches at a middle school who was faced with the following situation:

 

The first week of May his students will take the 8th Grade EOGs; the following week they will all take two field tests, the week after that students enrolled in Algebra will take their EOC and the students who failed the EOGs the first week will retake their EOGs (not the loss of “remediation” time for them, followed by finals for everybody in subjects that don’t have state tests. And we wonder why kids take drugs.

 

And to think that Lou Fabrizio who chastised us at the Social Studies Conference for “test bashing.” Hmmmmm.

 

 

"SECTION 28.17.(h)  Students in a local school shall
not be subject to field tests or national tests during the
two-week period preceding the administration of the end-of-grade
tests, end-of-course tests, or the school's regularly scheduled
final exams.  No school shall participate in more than two field
tests at any one grade level during a school year unless
that:unless:
       (1)  That school volunteers, through a
            vote of its school improvement team, to participate
            in an expanded number of field
            tests.tests; or
       (2)  The State Board of Education makes
            written findings, based on information provided by
            the Department of Public Instruction, that an
            additional field test must be administered at that
            school to ensure the reliability and validity of a
            specific test."

 

Passed as part of the following bill http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/html2001/Bills/AllVersions/House/H338vr.html