Marking Standardized Tests During Happy Hour Proves Problematic

by Mike Smith · 2009-10-02 06:45:00 UTC
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Who should be marking standardized tests? How about people that are well into happy hour, then receive a call saying there's more marking to be done, and it's got be to done immediately, over the phone. This is a situation Todd Farley found himself in as project director of a private testing company. This isn't about marking multiple choice papers, which can be done by machine, but marking the more open ended answers, the response and correct answer to which can be entirely subjective and arbitrary.

Todd suggests some solutions in a New York Times op-ed suggesting, "we could start by requiring that scoring be done only by professionals who have made a commitment to education — rather than by people like me." It seems obvious that someone qualified should have to do it, but would schools be happy to have the costs of testing further stretched? And that's without even getting into whether standardized testing is the best way to measure student performance.

Photo credit: Serges Blog

Mike Smith is associate editor at Change.org.
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