Head scratcher
From the readers may know more than I do department, does anyone out there have any ideas about this:
RALEIGH -- An unexpected increase in the number of children taking an alternative end-of-grade test for special-needs students forced state officials to push back testing dates, created administrative hassles in larger school districts like Guilford County and has educators baffled as to what exactly happened.The state expected to print 10,000 copies of the Extend2 test, given to third- through eighth-grade students with certain learning and physical disabilities in place of the standard end-of-grade test. Local testing officials say it would be used for nearly all students with disabilities except those with severe impairments.
But when final orders were tallied from across the state, North Carolina needed about 78,000 copies of the test, said Mildred Bazemore, the chief of North Carolina's test development section.
Click here for the whole story, or at least the story as far as I could write it.
What I still lack is a good explanation as to why the DPI was over-whelmed with test requests. Drop your suggestions for where to go looking for the answer at the comments link below.
Comments (3)
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I'm told it is a combination of factors:
1) Incompetence at the state level, where things often go awry and they underestimated the need.
2) Lack of a clear understanding at the classroom level (attributed to imperfect guidance from the state) of who is to take the E2, which lead schools to err on the side of caution and order more tests than they may ultimately need.
That's what I hear, anyway.
Posted on May 13, 2006 12:07 PM
Roch-
I think it will be interesting to see how many tests get returned untaken.
I'm also wondering if there are just a few schools districts out there who wanted to make their regular EOG #s look better, and so they ordered extra E2s for kids who maybe really don't need them...that's pure speculation but, I will admit, it's the first thing my mind jumped to.
--mark
Posted on May 13, 2006 4:41 PM
I just learned today that results from the math portion of the EOG (which is supposed to determine if you should advance to the next grade) won't be available until October.
Posted on May 19, 2006 10:05 AM