Special Op-Ed for Community Papers
 

Martin Cothran  The Family Foundation

About 520 words  One Time Rights © The Family Foundation

Deja Vu All Over Again 

When state education officials announced increases in state CATS test scores recently, there's something they conveniently neglected to tell us.

by Martin Cothran 

When we see some public official taking a fact and making it look more positive than it is, we call it "spinning."  To put a positive "spin" on a fact or event is to make it appear better than it is.  In fact, the line between spinning and outright misrepresentation is a very fine one.

When state education officials announced increases in state CATS test scores recently, they neglected to mention that the increases in scores might be due, not to gains in student performance, but to the way the tests are graded.  In fact, they almost completely ignored the change in the way the tests were graded in putting their spin on the results.

Last June, the State School Board decided to change the way the tests are graded.  In effect, the changes were similar to when a teacher grades a test on a curve.  The new method, in other words, has the effect of "spreading out" the scores:  There will be more children scoring higher and more children scoring lower than under the previous method of grading the tests.  In other words, the scores were more evenly distributed overall.

In figures provided by the Kentucky Department of Education to the State Board, the 2000 test results were figured according to the new scoring method, and it was discovered that there was that there was a greater tendency for students to score higher rather than lower, resulting in an overall increase in scores.

When officials released the 2001 scores at the beginning of October, they claimed progress in academic performance by comparing these new scores to the 2000 results.  But they drew almost no attention to the fact that the 2000 tests were graded using the old grading system, and that the 2001 tests were graded using the new system.  

In other words, state officials knew about the tendency of the new scoring system to increase scores well before they announced the 2001 results, and yet, when they release the new scores, they claimed progress in student performance, knowing that the increases could well have been the sole result of the different methods of grading used on the two tests.

To put it more bluntly, the rise in CATS tests scores may well be a statistical illusion.

This is not the first time state education officials have crossed the line between spin and misrepresentation.  In a report published by the Office for Education Accountability in 1995, a panel of national testing experts accused the Kentucky Department of Education of "misleading the public."  The report was a bombshell, and was probably, at least in part, responsible for the departure of then Commissioner of Education Thomas Boysen.  

What is even more disturbing about the latest example of what the OEA panel called "misleading the public"  is the state media's own role in the misinformation.  Although some newspapers covered the potential inflation in test scores last June, the news reports covering the inflated scores when they were actually released made little if any mention of the role of the new scoring method and its effect on the scores.

Kentucky parents deserve better than this. 

Martin Cothran is senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky, a nonprofit educational organization dealing with public policy issues affecting families.