Standard Based Assessment - Samoan Style

Thank God we are giving these tests at the end of the year, because if they were in the beginning I might have had a stroke from sheer ridiculousness. The SBAs are the tests developed by the Office of Curriculum and Assessment in the DOE to test that the students are meeting the standards that the DOE implemented as the foundation of the curriculum.

Here at Leone the sophomores are being tested Monday through Thursday, and the juniors on Friday. I am a proctor for a group of students with two other teachers here at my school. In just the first two days look what we ran into:

Math Section:

#18 has no answer listed for option D, it’s just blank.
Another question in the test book has a check mark printed next to the correct answer.

The students could use calculators, but the teachers didn’t know that so no one told the students to bring calculators.

Reading:

One problem asks students about the meaning of the underlined word – but there is no underlined word…

The student’s answer sheets are numbered 23, 24, 24, 25, 26, 28

General:

There is no actual time set, they can just take as much time as they need.

The teachers can answer questions during the test.

They get the whole test book for the week and just keep turning it in so in theory they could totally cheat.

Thanh caught kids cheating and the other proctor told her not to report it because it would lower the scores and the teachers would look bad (she did anyways).

The best:

I was talking to another teacher from a small elementary school and his administration ORDERED him to give the students the answers if they didn’t know. Yes, you read that right – he was ordered to cheat.

And this is only day two…