10/13 update: I did a little revising of this blog entry-nothing substantive, though. I was pretty tired when I wrote it and tonight I discovered some heavily garbled sections that needed correction. If you’ve already seen it, there’s nothing new here yet. I’m going to need a day or two to catch my breath before I can continue.

I had the privilege of being invited to participate in an exercise of power that few teachers will ever experience. The State of Alaska Dept. of Ed. hired an educational testing and assessment company to develop a standardized test for Alaska’s new grade level expectations for Science, (GLE’s), and they wanted Alaskan teachers to write test items. I assume I was nominated because I participated in a summer institute with the Alaska Science Consortium this year. The curriculum work I’ve been doing with science has been interesting, and it just got MORE interesting because now I have an up-close-and-personal view of where the poison in the well is coming from.

I’m not a fan of standardized testing. As a matter of fact, I don’t like testing of any kind. In a perfect world there would be nothing but performance assessments. But we have a long way to go before that can happen. In the meantime I’m trying to figure out how to get along in the world we’ve constructed. It’s fascinating to learn how these tests are developed. Mostly we think of them as authoritative but authorless texts without a history. Now I have been given a glimpse of where they come from. I want to devote the next few blog posts to my observations and impressions of the test development process because I think that every public school teacher who is affected by standardized testing can benefit from hearing what goes on inside the little rooms where these things come from.

We signed confidentiality agreements about not revealing the questions we write. My lips are sealed on that topic, but I don’t care because the questions aren’t important. The good stuff is all about the thinking behind the questions. I’ve always told my young students that test questions are written by sneaky manipulative people who stay up late into the night thinking of ways to fool kids into choosing wrong answers. Now I’m one of them. Heh, heh, heh. There’s only about 26 of us representing the whole state! There are other groups of teachers involved in other phases of the process, but at this point, the ball is in our court. I asked how we were chosen to be there, because most of us had no clue, and the woman from the Dept. of Ed. said she contacted everyone who had ever been on a science committee. I wonder about that because I’m not real active in the curriculum development realm. Anyhow, we’re a bunch of test-weary Alaskan teachers who are going to do our best to be sensitive to the cultural differences of the various groups of students scattered across this huge state. There are several teachers from rural school districts. The interesting thing about who makes the test questions is that the company that the state contracted with is writing the final draft. They’re working with teachers to get input and ideas that will lend a local flavor to the test items. We’re not literally writing the test, because each item is heavily revised throughout the process.

Other things that I noticed today: One of the guidelines instructed us to “Respect the diversity of Alaska’s student population.” That seems altogether paradoxical in the context of a standardized testing scenario. One of the people wearing a suit from out of state told us, “This isn’t a reading test.” I kept my mouth shut because that was too big of a discussion and I wouldn’t win the argument, anyway. But really, how are kids going to take the test if they don’t READ it? I think most people would agree that kids who read well will do better on reading assignments than kids who don’t read well.

It’s too late to write any more at the moment. I have to get up early to put on my wolf suit. Next time I’ll talk more specifically about the do’s and don’ts of good test questions.