There is a great deal of advice available about giving high stakes tests securely in school settings. States run annual training sessions and provide test administration manuals. Major vendors serving schools provide training and guidelines of varying types. Sometimes the different sources disagree and the emphases vary by the nature of the helping agency. What is a test administrator to do?
This webinar focuses on administering tests in schools and identifies ten "best practices" that apply to all high stakes testing. The content is drawn from careful analyses of current testing practices by states, districts, and testing vendors.
To be an effective test administrator, you will need to read the background materials about each testing program and attend any training that is provided. If you also follow the guidelines presented in this webinar, you will be in a very good position to promote fairness and validity in each of the programs for which you share responsibility.
In this webinar, you will learn:
* Ten Best Practices that apply to all high stakes testing
* What is required to be an effective test administrator
* How to promote fairness and validity in your testing programs
Sponsored by the National Association of Assessment Directors and Caveon Consulting Services, Caveon Test Security
Be sure to insert polls and poll placeholder slides. (See John’s Email)
Also insert Q&A slides between parts 1,2,3 and at end
Recent Headlines:
Paid Test taker proxies on the SAT
Student caught hacking the College Bowl quiz questions
Remember John’s guidance:
This webinar must provide participants with suggested steps they can take themselves.
However, it could be much, much worse. A couple of months ago, results of a Michigan educator survey were published. Of the 3,000 or so teachers who responded:
34% felt pressure to change grades
1 in 3 felt pressure to cheat on standardized tests
21%, 1 in 5 said they know of an educator who changed scores, and most alarming…
8% admitted to changing students’ grades due to outside pressure.
Holy smokes—if that’s the case, we just jumped from 1,700 to 14,000 classrooms we’re concerned about!
This is a great slide to acknowledge the unique demands and challenges for assessment in school districts. Be prepared to mention a few additional points that reveal your long experience in schools.
Also the notion that the teachers, if engaged in inappropriate assistance to students, are doing so in the misguided notion that their actions represent student advocacy rather than self-imposed pressure to use test results to validate their teaching effectiveness.
Potential Conflicts of Interest
Teacher Accountability & Bonuses tied to Score Gains
School Accountability or exit from “Under Improvement” Status
Non-Standardized Environment
Making do in potentially compromised test situations with word walls, other cues, students in close proximity, lax proctor monitoring, cell phones
Clustering distractible or poor students with good models in small groups
Testing in short chunks to avoid fatigue, or maximize effort
Examinee Familiarity
Teacher identification with, advocacy for, students with whom they have invested considerable effort
Student Halo effect in the eyes of teacher who also their proctor, scorer
Transporting and storing test materials
Large schools/long hallways, and concessions by building test coordinator to teachers on storage, access, collection
Shortcuts by teacher proctors and building test coordinators when crises or fatigue arises, or typical last minute dilemmas such as teacher absence, time crunch toward end of testing window
LOST secure materials, unauthorized prep guides, teacher copies items from screen
I’ll touch on some specifics for each key role across the segmented time frame of state assessment programs, but I invite you to review the entire Test Security Matrix located on the Caveon website at the link shown in the next slide.
The District leader sets the tone for the overall administration of all phases of the district’s assessment program- including state as well as local assessments.
Positive, highly visible, and well-organized interactions by the school leader with test proctors, building assessment coordinators, student groups, the teacher association, and the community serve the district well by signaling the importance and the overall monitoring of a sound program to measure and report on student growth. All local stakeholders will be reassured by these activities- while potential mischief makers will be put on alert that their efforts to subvert the process will quickly be brought to light. Prompt investigation of suspected test irregularities will further reinforce this positive stance.
In the absence of a strong consistent leader stance on the importance of adhering to the established assessment procedures – before, during, and after the testing window, teachers, administrators, and students often come to believe they are on their own- each may have, as we have commented, different perspectives on the importance of both the testing, and their own rule compliance.
In instances when school leaders emphasis score gains at all costs, threatening discipline, demotion, or dismissal for poor results, the potential rises for score erasure activity, deliberate coaching before and during test sessions, or actions such as illegally removing low scoring students from attendance rolls .