THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 12, 1996 TAG: 9603120298
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Writing-test scores for 88 middle school students whose teacher gave them advance information about a statewide exam will not be counted, officials announced Monday.
The decision, reached by a committee of local administrators last week, will probably hurt Elizabeth City Middle School's overall average in state results, officials said.
But the committee members - Superintendent Joe Peel, Assistant Superintendent Mack McCary, testing and accountability Director Rita Collie and Principal Diane Bradford - concluded that the results were not valid.
``They do not count,'' Collie said Monday. ``The school loses those scores from its accountability results.''
The essay-style writing exam was supposed to be taken on Feb. 6 by every fourth-, sixth- and seventh-grader in North Carolina. But bad weather forced school closings and test postponements in several school districts, including Elizabeth City-Pasquotank.
During the delay, information about the test question, or prompt, spread by word of mouth among some students and teachers who knew people in other districts.
One seventh-grade teacher at the middle school, officials said, used that information to give students hints about the topic and format of the test on the day before Elizabeth City's exam date, Feb. 13. The question asked students to argue whether physical education should be a required class.
After learning of the incident the day after the exam, administrators alerted officials in Raleigh and asked for guidance. Because the actual question had not been given out, it was not clear whether the test results would be valid.
But state education officials left the decision in the hands of local officials, who determined that the extra day to think about the topic was enough to nullify the scores.
``We discussed whether or not this in effect gave students the opportunity to practice writing in advance of the actual 50 minutes of testing,'' Collie said. ``If it does, that gives them an advantage.''
The state plans to use this year's scores as a baseline for determining how well North Carolina schools are teaching writing. Next year's classes will be judged according to goals set for each school by state officials.
Throwing out the 88 tests, representing roughly 20 percent of the district's seventh graders, will likely lower the middle school's overall performance, officials said. ``The ones that we've lost are probably some of our best students,'' Peel said.
``The writing scores at the middle school have consistently been improving,'' Collie said. ``This year they had worked extremely hard. . . . So we had expected a very good percentage of students doing well.''
Tests such as the writing exam and multiple-choice end-of-grade tests have taken on new meaning under the state's ``New ABCs of Public Education,'' a plan to empower local districts and to hold them accountable for teaching students effectively.
State officials use the results of these tests to decide if teachers and principals are doing their jobs. That puts a lot of pressure on educators to come up with good numbers, officials said.
Officials have declined to name the teacher involved and, citing personnel laws, would not say whether the teacher had been disciplined. ``We have addressed the issue,'' Peel said, adding that the teacher was still working for the district.
KEYWORDS: STANDARDIZED TEST by CNB