Should Inidividual Test Scores Be Publicly Available?
- on 04.24.07
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Over at Extreme Wisdom, Bruno received an email asking for help from a fellow school reformer. I also received this email and have replied, but I wanted to explore Bruno’s thoughts some more. The email stated:
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After the most recent ISAT results were released, it became clear that there was no way to use them to measure academic progress and improvement due to lowering standards and “dumbing down†the tests, so I requested by FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) my district’s Iowa test results for the last three years, and any analytical reports from the administration regarding the tests. The district refused to provide any documents, stating that the results were exempt from FOIA because it might violate someone’s “student privacyâ€, and because the request didn’t “name specific documentsâ€. |
Bruno’s response was as follows:
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Taxpayers should never need to FOIA ANY such documents. They should be posted on-line IMMEDIATELY upon compiliation, with students names removed. None of this is hard, or even controversial – unless of course, you wish to hide how ineffective your protected and corrupt industry truly is. As for the lame excuse that such compilation and posting takes time and money, the fact is that every district in Illinois is saddled with enough bureaucratic deadwood that they could easily add this task to one of their more sedentary members. |
Why do schools hide test scores? Why do they spend months after getting the preliminary results before the public gets to see them. I know they claim it is to correct any mistakes, but that seems another lame excuse. It is more likely the scores did not produce the results they wanted and made them look bad. The corrections are more likely loopholes to exclude certain test takers which help their scores.
I agree with Bruno that indiviual test scores should be available online for everyone to see, minus the students name of course. It would be so simple to provide a spreadsheet with each test score by school, grade, subject, etc. This data is placed into a database once graded or they could not produce the aggregate scores they show the public in their school and district report cards. Logic dictates, that if they won’t release this data after claiming to be doing such a wonderful job, they are hiding something.
As far as the cost of putting this online, I have written before how this can be done for little or not cost. Here is the explanation of how to do this from my post almost 2 years ago.
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This is a rather simple task given today’s technology. Electronic documents can be placed on the Internet with no software cost. The cost in personnel time is minimal. The time required is the time it takes to send a document to a printer, save a file and then copy it to a specified directory. In other words, it takes a few seconds of manpower for each document to be made available. Non-electronic documents will take longer. These would require the use of a scanner, which can be purchased for under $50. The manpower requirements involve scanning the document first and then following the steps for an electronic document. A single document can be done in under a minute. Both of these steps could be done on a going forward basis. The older documents could be placed on the Internet over several months as time permits. Volunteers, if desired, could do the scanning to speed up this process. The process should reserve the copy to the Internet as a Staff Function. That way you maintain security and consistency of the system. To accomplish this there are a few steps that need to be taken. I will outline them below: 1. The Webmaster has to setup an FTP directory on the web server. This should be read only for the public and staff. Approximate time to setup would be 30 minutes to an hour. I would also recommend the following as well: 1. Sub-directories under the FTP site to categorize the documents This is a low cost, but very effective way to put documents online. It will help build trust again to the community. As the Board of Education, you will be telling the community, that we want your scrutiny. We want you to see how District 46 is operated. We want you to judge for yourself how we as a board are doing and how the District Administration is doing. We want you to see how we spend your money. I know there are some that will resist this idea. They will be afraid of micromanagement. To those, I say, “You have that now.†Anyone who wants to micromanage can FOIA any document they wish now. They already have that opportunity, though few take advantage of it. With the ease of getting the documentation there will probably be a spike in micromanagement. I believe that as you are open with the community they will be able to see and trust you again. This will subside and the trust gained will be immense. Another argument may be that FOIA requests now bring in a few dollars to the District. I don’t believe that making a copy of a document now can be done for 20 cents per page. Yes, the copying is minimal, but how much time has to go into finding the documents? How much time does it take to mark out privacy items? Privacy issues will still need to be handled appropriately as mentioned above. How much easier is that to handle electronically than by hand? |
In addition, I have written a script to autumate the linking of documents, see D46News.com for an example. I have offered this script for free to 3 school district now, 2 rejected it outright, the other is comtemplating using it.
School districts don’t want open government. They want to be these little protected bureacracies where they rule without interference from the community peasants.
