Connecticut Mastery Test Results Face Another Delay

By Larissa Lytwyn

State Department of Education officials have announced that public school test results that are already two months late will be delayed again due to concerns that scores are too low to be accurate.

Officials has asked the contractor, CTB/McGraw-Hill of Monterey, Calif., to score portions of the test for a third time after a second scoring still produced scores markedly lower than those of a year ago, The Hartford Courant reported.

“I’m certainly not happy there’s a second delay,” Education Commissioner Betty J. Sternberg said.

The problem is the worst in the 19-year history of the mastery test, an annual reading, writing, and mathematics exam that is the state’s chief benchmark of educational progress.

Although the state is planning to released one portion of the reading scores to school districts by the end of the first week of April, a second part of the reading test is not yet ready. Ms Sternberg said she did not know when the full report will be available and that deadlines for scores on the math and writing parts of the test might also be delayed.

Michael Kean, a spokesman for CTB/McGraw-Hill, said the company delivered the latest reading scores on time and that the scoring “was based on procedures Connecticut approved.”

State officials chose not to release the scores because they do not “align with last year’s scores” by another company, he said.

The discrepancy may be related to the transition to a new company, Mr Kean said. He defended the accuracy of the scores.

“The CMT is already so delayed that the scores are only useful to see if we need to adjust curriculum or provide targeted in-service training,” said Newtown Assistant Superintendent of Schools Alice Jackson. However, she acknowledged, she is pleased that the state is checking to make sure that the scoring is consistent with the standards set.

“It would be much worse to release inaccurate information about our students,” she said.

While describing the delay as “unfortunate,” Head O’ Meadow Elementary School Principal Bill Bircher said that the CMT score is only one of several factors used to assess students.

“Fortunately,” he said, “the Newtown district’s practice of ongoing appraisal is strong.”

Sandy Hook Elementary School Donna Pagé agreed. “We are currently into our curriculum-based assessments,” she said. “We use the CMT primarily as a confirmation of what we already know about our students.”

While Ms Pagé was troubled by the delay, she empathized with the state Education Department. “With the No Child Left Behind Act, there is too much at stake,” she said. “What use would the scores be if they were returned to us and not accurate?”

This was Reed Intermediate School Principal Donna Denniston’s first year experiencing the full CMT cycle. “It certainly is a delay that is disruptive to us,” she said, noting that the scores were a valuable indicator of student performance.

“For example, if the sixth graders need to improve in a certain area, the fifth grade teachers can work on it,” she said.

Nevertheless, she acknowledged the importance of ongoing assessment in the Newtown district: “The CMT is just one of many factors.”

About 125,000 fourth, sixth, and eighth graders took the exam in September. The state Education Department found inconsistently low percentages of students meeting state goals in reading, writing, and mathematics — sometimes as much as 20 percentage points below what was expected — when the scores came back last fall.

Modest fluctuations are common from one year to the next, but the large shift prompted the state to postpone its customary January release of scores and ask CTB/McGraw-Hill to rescore the test.

The stakes are higher than before because scores are used to determine whether public schools are meeting standards and avoiding penalties under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The original errors occurred on an essay portion of the test and on reading and mathematics questions that required students to write open-ended answers. There were no apparent problems on the more easily scored multiple-choice questions.

The state hired CTB/McGraw-Hill last year, ending a relationship with Harcourt Assessment, a Texas company that had scored Connecticut’s mastery test since it was first given in 1985.

(This story includes reporting by the Associated Press.)