Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for December 5, 2005 STATE 5TH GRADE READING TEST

Well the saga of last Spring's botched Illinois 5th grade reading test continues.

Maybe Bennett Elementary will pass after all...two wrongs might make it right!

From today's Chicago Tribune...

Math miscue flunks 4,000 5th graders

By Diane Rado
Tribune staff reporter

More than 4,000 5th graders who flunked the state reading test in the spring may pass after all, thanks to a fluke in scoring.

Pupils needed at least a 156 to pass the high-stakes test, which is scored on a scale of 120 to 200. But something strange happened when results were computed: It was impossible to get a 156.

State education officials said Friday that a mathematical oddity in the scoring process, exacerbated by a security breach on the reading test, allowed pupils to score only above or below the cutoff.

Now they're recommending the passing score be lowered to 155, a move that could mean the difference between passing and failing for 4,342 children across Illinois. Those pupils, including more than 2,800 in the Chicago area, scored 155 on the test, state data shows.

In addition, 29 schools that failed federal standards because too few pupils passed the 5th-grade test would win a reprieve, said Becky McCabe, head of testing for the Illinois State Board of Education. Of those schools, 17 are in Chicago or its suburbs. State board members are expected to take up the matter this month.

Sensitive to concerns about lowering standards, McCabe said any change to the cutoff would be a one-time occurrence affecting only the 5th-grade reading test for spring 2005.

Problems have plagued that particular test. A reading passage was inadvertently used in training workshops designed to help teachers administer the spring test. When that same passage appeared on the test taken by pupils, state officials had to discard the answers.

Fewer questions on the 5th-grade test threw off the process used to determine scores.

This is the first year that an actual cutoff score, 156, got left out, McCabe said.

State officials discovered the problem after a principal in Freeport School District 145 examined his 5th-grade scores.

Charles McNulty, principal at Carl Sandburg Middle School, said he noticed that several 5th graders scored very close to the cutoff point on the reading test.

"We were seeing a lot of kids scoring between 150 and 155, which kind of threw us off because our math assessment results were excellent," he said.

McNulty said he suspected that eliminating the reading passage could have affected the scores, so he decided to appeal to the state board this fall. His school had failed to meet federal standards because of the reading scores, he said.

State officials then discovered that no 5th grader in the state had scored a 156.

A state testing review committee on Friday recommended that a passing score of 155 be used to determine whether schools met state-required passing rates on the test and federal standards overall. A separate appeals committee also recommended that McNulty's appeal be approved, which would take his school off the failing list.

"We prompted them to look at it and they acted with integrity," McNulty said Friday.

McCabe said that the appeals committee also recommended that the other 28 schools affected by the scoring fluke also be allowed to use the lower cutoff in determining whether they met federal and state standards.

State officials have not decided how or whether pupils will be notified that they passed the reading test.