Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for October 5, 2006 IL TO MISS REPORTING DEADLINE

From the Chicago Tribune...

Testing program problems push back delivery of reports

By Diane Rado
Tribune staff reporter

State school Supt. Randy Dunn acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that blunders in the state testing program likely will mean a delay in getting test results and other school information to parents and taxpayers.

State law requires annual school report cards to be made available prior to Oct. 31, giving communities a wealth of information about how their public schools are performing.

But following a fiasco in the spring over late delivery of tests to schools, and subsequent problems with scoring, Dunn said, "We don't anticipate at this point making the Oct. 31 deadline."

His comments came after the Illinois State Board of Education voted Wednesday to penalize testing contractor Harcourt Assessment for the problems and to transfer most of the company's duties to another firm.

Pearson Educational Measurement will take over most duties related to administering the state's grade school test, with the board approving a $32.9 million contract through September 2009. Harcourt will continue to develop test questions, among other duties, but its contract was reduced by nearly $20 million for 2007 and 2008.

The testing fiasco has been a blemish on the board and for Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who took more control over the state education agency under a controversiallaw in 2004 and vowed to make it more efficient.

The late delivery of grade school tests led to criticism by lawmakers and educators, who questioned whether test results would even be valid given all the problems.

By now, grade schools have received their spring test results, which are later included in the school report cards made available to the public.

But high schools still don' t have their scores from the 11th-grade Prairie State Achievement Examination. "We are the latest we've ever been" in getting those scores to schools, said Becky McCabe, who oversees testing for the board.

State officials could not predict when high schools will get the scores.

The state board earlier transferred Harcourt's duties on the high school test to another firm.

Harcourt attributed the delay in processing high school scores to a combination of factors, including inaccurate information about students' background, according to company spokesman Russell Schweiss.

The federal No Child Left Behind law requires that test results be broken out by categories, including the race of students, to ensure that all children are learning.

A cornerstone of the 2002 law is informing the public of how students from diverse backgrounds are performing, and states must provide that information and other data in annual school report cards.

The report cards include how many students are in classes in certain grades, how many teachers have master's degrees and how well students perform on state tests. They are already somewhat outdated when parents get them by Oct. 31, because they include information from tests taken the prior school year.

In 2003, the state missed the Oct. 31 deadline for releasing report cards in part because the testing data were riddled with errors.

High school officials said Wednesday that they would have liked to have their test scores by now, because they use them to identify students who need help and to track student performance over time.

"The more timely any kind of feedback is, the more relevant it is," said Steve Cordogan, director of research and evaluation for Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214.

High schools also don't have information about whether they have met federal standards under No Child Left Behind, which judges schools based on test results and other factors. Schools with high-poverty populations have to offer free tutoring to students and transfers to better schools if they repeatedly fail the standards.

But with the school year already under way, high schools still don't know whether they have to offer tutoring or transfers. Under the federal law, schools are supposed to notify parents before the first day of school if their child has the right to transfer.

Illinois and a handful of other states have been given a deadline extension, a U.S. Department of Education spokesman said.