The scary way Common Core test ‘cut scores’ are selected [View all]

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BY VALERIE STRAUSS

You may have given no thought to the “cut scores” that are set for various tests, but they make all the difference in who passes and who fails. What exactly are cut scores? The Educational Testing Service describes them this way:
Cut scores are selected points on the score scale of a test. The points are used to determine whether a particular test score is sufficient for some purpose.

Notice the word “selected.” Cut scores are selected based on criteria that the selectors decide have some meaning. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the criteria have no real validity in revealing student achievement, which is the supposed mission of the test — and that means the scores have no meaning either. This post, by award-winning Prinicipal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, explains all of this in chilling detail.

Burris has been doing a remarkable job of chronicling New York’s botched reform effort for some time on this blog. (You can read some of her work here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Her narrative is important beyond the boundaries of New York, because other states are also doing some of the same things in the name of school reform. Burris was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by thousands of principals teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens. You can read the letter by clicking here.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/29/the-scary-way-common-core-test-cut-scores-are-selected/