California education officials state that Smarter Balanced can’t be fairly compared to their previous exam. So how do they try to prevent this from happening. They remove 15 years of test results from their website because…. transparency.
Seriously… EdSource reports:
California Department of Education officials have repeatedly cautioned against comparing students’ scores on past state standardized tests with forthcoming results on tests aligned with the Common Core standards. The academic standards have changed and the tests are different, making comparisons inaccurate, they and others have warned.
Earlier this month, as the department got ready to send parents the initial student scores on the new tests sometime over the next few weeks, department officials deleted old test results going back more than 15 years from the most accessible part of the department’s website, impeding the public’s ability to make those comparisons.
The department has removed results dating back to 1998 in math and English language arts from DataQuest, the website where it posts education data it collects. That includes the database of the Standardized Testing and Reporting program, known as STAR, which enabled the public to search results by district, school and student subgroups from grades 3 through 12 since 2003.
On Friday they reconsidered and started to restore the data.
Earlier this month, the California Department of Education moved results from the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) program in math and English language arts from the location on our website where we plan to put up results from the new California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP, while continuing to make that information available in research files and in another section of our website, EdData.
We sought to provide clear and relevant information to the public, highlight CAASPP results, and maintain our strong commitment to transparency. Unfortunately, this action was misperceived by some and may have caused confusion. As a result, we are restoring STAR test results to their previous location on our website.
Barry Garelick says
California Dept of Ed restored the 15 yrs of test data, responding to the complaints it received. See: http://edsource.org/2015/state-officials-to-restore-past-test-data-preceding-common-core-and-smarter-balanced/85861
Shane Vander Hart says
Yes, I mentioned that in the post. The fact they’d take the data down shows me what their natural inclination is however.