The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Test Scorer

[proud2BlibKansan]

Standardized testing has become central to education policy in the United States. After dramatically expanding in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act, testing has been further enshrined by the Obama administration’s $3.4 billion “Race to the Top” grants. Given the ongoing debate over these policies, it might be useful to hear about the experiences of a hidden sector of the education workforce: those of us who make our living scoring these tests. Our viewpoint is instructive, as it reveals the many contradictions and absurdities built into a test-scoring system run by for-profit companies and beholden to school administrators and government officials with a stake in producing inflated numbers. Our experiences also provide insight into how the testing mania is stunting the development of millions of young minds.

I recently spent four months working for two test-scoring companies, scoring tens of thousands of papers, while routinely clocking up to seventy hours a week. This was my third straight year doing this job. While the reality of life as a test scorer has recently been chronicled by Todd Farley in his book Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, a scathing insider’s account of his fourteen years in the industry, I want to tell my story to affirm that Farley’s indictment is rooted in experiences common throughout the test-scoring world.1

“Wait, someone scores standardized tests? I thought those were all done by machines.” This is usually the first response I get when I tell people I’ve been eking out a living as a test-scoring temp. The companies responsible for scoring standardized tests have not yet figured out a way to electronically process the varied handwriting and creative flourishes of millions of third to twelfth graders. Nor, to my knowledge, have they begun to outsource this work to India. Instead, every year, the written-response portions of innumerable standardized tests given across the country are scored by human beings—tens of thousands of us, a veritable army of temporary workers.

I often wonder who students (or teachers and parents, for that matter) picture scoring their papers. When I was a student, I envisioned my tests being graded by qualified teachers in another part of the country, who taught the grade level and subject corresponding to the tests. This idea, it turns out, is as much a fantasy as imagining all the tests are being scored by machines.

more . . . http://www.monthlyreview.org/101201dimaggio.php

[somone]

1. Corporate welfare

Bullshit work of dubious value. All profits go to the execs - and the workers slave away for peanuts.

[newblewtoo]

2. I spent about twenty years

working with post secondary students (70's-90's). During that all we kept hearing was how the secondary education system was failing and I must admit, year after year I saw a noticeable decrease in the skill levels of our students. I decided that after I retired I would see what it was like on the other side and took several contracts scoring standardized tests.

Both this article and Todd Farley's book are substantially correct with regard to my experiences within this industry. I am sure there are minor differences from company to company but I have to say that while reading Farley's book I could readily identify people I sat beside. There may be a million stories on the scoring floor but it would seem most are the same.

In my experience, scorer qualifications were set by the state DOE. One state may require a minimum of sixty hours of college study, another a full degree and course work in the subject area being scored. I was qualified to score in all states for math and English, both reading and writing. I have both bachelor's and master's degree along with numerous professional certifications. I worked with scorers who held Doctorates as well as those who had only completed sixty hours of course study. It is a strange system.