2 ms·

On national tests in Norway I've never heard this occur. What they do instead is to ask the weaker pupils not to attend that day to increase the average score.

aidenn0 6y ago
Similar shenanigans happened in California during the brief period of rating schools by student's test scores. The tests were not annual, so poor performers would repeat a grade the year before the test. Then schools were rated lower for having kids repeat grades. They did the encouraging poor performers to be absent on test day thing as well, so the state subtracted points for poor attendance and had a second day for kids who missed the first. On top of this, anecdotally it seemed that the marginal schools were made worse because they would spend time teaching to the test, while the higher performing schools didn't feel compelled to do that. There are still knock-on effects today after having stopped that. Our daughter has been consistently behind by 1-1.5 years in assessment testing in every subject from grades 1-6. It took years of fighting to get her retained. An actual conversation ended with the person we were talking to admitting that the best thing for both the school and our daughter would be to retain her, and that the only reason they were refusing was because "it is against policy for us to retain any student for any reason other than a long-term absence" Fortunately once that was said out loud we made progress through the system again. Prior to that there was all sorts of apologia for the policy, and how retaining our daughter would cause irreparable damage to her psyche; as if her knowing she was the "dumb kid" and having entire lessons go completely over her head was not at all damaging...
fma 6y ago
In my state, they report the number of students who took the state test for each school as a percentage of population. I would be suspicious of any school that doesn't have over 98% take. Yeah they can have a few kids not take it, but the overall score still is impacted by 98%.

aidenn0 6y ago

Similar shenanigans happened in California during the brief period of rating schools by student's test scores. The tests were not annual, so poor performers would repeat a grade the year before the test. Then schools were rated lower for having kids repeat grades. They did the encouraging poor performers to be absent on test day thing as well, so the state subtracted points for poor attendance and had a second day for kids who missed the first. On top of this, anecdotally it seemed that the marginal schools were made worse because they would spend time teaching to the test, while the higher performing schools didn't feel compelled to do that. There are still knock-on effects today after having stopped that. Our daughter has been consistently behind by 1-1.5 years in assessment testing in every subject from grades 1-6. It took years of fighting to get her retained. An actual conversation ended with the person we were talking to admitting that the best thing for both the school and our daughter would be to retain her, and that the only reason they were refusing was because "it is against policy for us to retain any student for any reason other than a long-term absence" Fortunately once that was said out loud we made progress through the system again. Prior to that there was all sorts of apologia for the policy, and how retaining our daughter would cause irreparable damage to her psyche; as if her knowing she was the "dumb kid" and having entire lessons go completely over her head was not at all damaging...

fma 6y ago

In my state, they report the number of students who took the state test for each school as a percentage of population. I would be suspicious of any school that doesn't have over 98% take. Yeah they can have a few kids not take it, but the overall score still is impacted by 98%.