Earlier this week, a story made the rounds of an adult—a school board member with two masters degrees, no less—who took his state's high-stakes standardized test in math and reading for 10th graders and absolutely bombed it, getting 10 out of 60 questions right on the math test and getting a D in reading. The story came from a reputable source, but who was this unnamed man?
Now, the Answer Sheet's Valerie Strauss interviews test-taker Rick Roach, a member of the Board of Education in Orange County, Florida. His masters degrees are in education and educational psychology. Roach told Strauss that he took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test after learning that just 39 percent of the district's 10th graders were reading at grade level, according to the test: “So I was thinking, ‘What are they taking that tells them they can’t read? What is this test? Our kids do okay on the eighth grade test and on the fifth grade test and then they get stupid in the 10th grade?”
Thousands of Florida students with 3.0 or higher grade point averages are denied high school diplomas, Roach said, because they fail at least one portion of the FCAT. Last year, he said, 41,000 kids were denied diplomas across the state — about 70 in his district — and some of them have a 3.0 GPA or better.
That could be a sign that the grades don't reflect students' abilities, of course, and that teachers are grading too easy. But if test passage rates are declining late in the game, that tells a different story. And if an adult who trains educators cannot do well on the test, there's reason for concern.
Perhaps most telling, though, are the lengths Roach had to go to in order to complete this experiment: State law only allows the FCAT to be taken by students. What a fantastic way to avoid accountability for the contents and effectiveness of the test.