Wendy Lecker: Tests fail at measuring student growth - StamfordAdvocate: "The DOE also decided what point on each scale represented appropriate achievement levels for each grade; i.e., what the "cut scores" were. Score above this point and you are "proficient." Score below it and you "fail." As the late education expert Gerald Bracey explained, cut scores are set by deciding in advance what percentage of students you want to fail; a procedure that is "both arbitrary and political."
So, what does the vertical-scale score tell a parent about how her child has progressed in math or reading? Not much. It is a rough approximation of what someone has called math or reading achievement.
The DOE claims that these vertical scales are tools to improve instruction and improve schools. However, as testing guru W. James Popham told me, scale scores have "essentially no diagnostic value whatever to teachers, parents or students.""
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