Thousands of TNReady tests scored incorrectly
About 9,400 TNReady assessment tests across the state were scored incorrectly, according to the Tennessee Department of Education.
The scoring issue affected about 70 schools in 33 districts.
Statewide, about 1,700 of the tests that were tallied incorrectly, when corrected, changed the score, possibly affecting whether a student was proficient on the assessment. About 600,000 tests were taken in the 2016-17 school year.
“There is no impact to the statewide results,” according to an email from state spokeswoman Sara Gast. The impact on individual schools’ scores, however, is unclear.
More than 1,000 of those incorrectly scored were in Shelby County Schools, Superintendent Dorsey Hopson told school board members Friday. Metro Nashville Public Schools and Knox County Schools also were affected, as well as the state-run Achievement School District.
“I don’t think they can write it off and say it was just a few students,” Shelby County school board member Chris Caldwell said. “They owe it to every student to get to the bottom of it and correct anything that needs to be corrected.”
The tests that were scored incorrectly were in three subjects: English I, English II, and integrated math II.
Teachers also are affected. TVAAS scores, which are based on student test results and factor into teacher evaluations, will be reworked for 230 educators statewide because of the changed test scores.
A statement from Tennessee Education Association spokesman Jim Wrye said the organization will be looking into “all aspects of last spring’s testing.”
“We’ve been hearing for months from teachers across the state about growing TNReady concerns, from mistakes in the instruction booklets to huge shifts in the state’s statistical estimates [TVAAS] for teachers,” Wrye said. “This makes the fourth year in a row where major problems have surfaced in a system where there are a lot of high-stakes consequences for students, teachers and schools based on test scores. How do we know this is the full extent of the problem?”
TNReady tests are administered and scored by a third-party vendor, Questar Assessment.
“Questar has now correctly re-scored these tests, and they are processing new score reports for those students, which we will distribute to districts,” Gast’s email said.
She also forwarded a statement from Questar Chief Operating Officer Brad Baumgartner:
“Questar takes responsibility for and apologizes for this scoring error. We are putting in additional steps in our processes to prevent any future occurrence. We are in the process of producing revised reports and committed to doing so as quickly as possible.”
In addition to the scoring errors, almost 1,700 teachers in 62 districts were affected by the state having incorrect classroom rosters. Those rosters are used to assign student tests to teachers.
The state said about 900 teachers might see changes in their overall TVAAS score. About 240 are in Nashville, Gast said.
“The rest are distributed throughout the state, generally in pretty small numbers,” Gast said. District and school TVAAS composites are not affected by the roster issue.
Gast said the problem was caused by the vendor incorrectly updating its scanning software. The software issues also caused
the delay of test results for report cards, the department said in June.
Students took the yearend tests in the spring. The tests factor into students’ individual grades, and are part of how the state holds schools and districts accountable.
The state has been rolling out test results over the last few months. Schoolby-school test score data in grades 3-8 has yet to be released publicly statewide.
This is the first year students in grades 3-8 have taken the TNReady test after the state’s previous vendor failed to launch an online test. The vendor then was unable to deliver
to districts testing materials for elementary and middle school grades.
Only high schools were able to take the test.
The state fired that vendor, Measurement Inc., and hired Questar Assessment last summer under a two-year, $30 million-peryear contract.
Keith Williams, executive director of the Memphis Shelby County Education Association, said the new issue with Questar “challenges the validity of the test.”
“I’ve lost pretty much all confidence in this statewide testing system,” Williams said.
Gast said the state is working with Questar to make sure these issues don’t arise again.
“Though we have reported over 99 percent of grade 3-8 and EOC [end of course] score data correctly, we need to be at 100 percent accuracy,” she said. “We hold our vendor and ourselves to the highest standard of delivery because that is what educators, students and families in Tennessee expect and deserve.”