Hey DPI - Your Algebra 1 EOC is still worthless as a math test.

Our Dept. of Public Instruction latest version of the Algebra 1 End of Course Test, much like past versions, involves the reading of over 2500 words just to read the questions. That is the equivalent of reading Poe's Cask of Amontillado. Only about 18-20 of the 80 questions were true math questions; those would be questions that have instructions like solve, evaluate, and factor. The rest of the questions are either a paragraph with numbers and formulas scattered therein or a large matrix that takes up most of a page.
The Algebra 1 EOC is primarily a reading test with students' math ability a secondary concern. The test itself was 37 pages which is a little more than two questions per page. For a "math" test?!
Another problem is that many of the questions started with a problem type the student should be familiar with but adds a needless and irrelevant extension of the question that completely obscures the learning goal being tested. For students that don't read well or have recall problems, that is a pure nightmare. A teacher cannot cover all of those possible variations in a semester (90 min. class) or a school year (45 min. classes) , the concepts yes, but the all the possible extensions, no way.
DPI also plays games with the grading. A student can guess and score a 60; I have seen it. Ninth percentile will get a student a 60, just 10 points away from passing. Oh but here's where another DPI game comes in; a student must now score a 77 or better on the exam to pass the class. A student can have a 90+ average and score a 76 on the exam and be considered a failure. That student would have to retest. I have seen students with learning disabilities score 76's on EOC's after busting their butts doing their work for the whole semester/year only to be denied credit because of a single point on a stinkin' test on one stinkin' day. Oh sure they get to take the test again, but the damage is already done, damage that those students have been fighting to overcome their whole academic lives.
Teachers used to have the final say, but now teachers aren't trusted to decide which ones of their students have mastered the material. How would a doctor feel if every diagnosis had to approved by team of doctors in Raleigh that hadn't seen a patient in 10 -20 years?
The bottom line is that our tests don't really measure much of anything. Life isn't a multiple choice bubble fest with answers provided. A 2007 comparison of our tests to NAEP scores show that NC has improved a bit; we now rate a D+ score. So our students are forced to sit through one, two, even three (summer school) versions of this "math" test that really tests reading before it tests math, but the questions are not quite like the ones they've been studying all with a gun to their heads (the 77 cut off score) that is really a joke because you can get the 77 just by getting about half the questions right. Utterly pointless.
More info on high stakes testing from Alfie Kohn here including a nice quote from Paul Wellstone.
I am a teacher. I have to live with this garbage every year, every semester. It needs to change.
Thank you for reading.
Mike