The Kentucky Core Content Test has been revamped to comply with federal guidelines under NCLB, and I'm afraid that in the process, Kentucky may have followed the lead of other states and taken this opportunity to make the exams easier.
I have no direct proof of this.
But I am concerned by what I'm hearing from teachers and administrators who have given the new test for the first time over the past two weeks. The opinion seems fairly uniform - it's easier. The number of Open Response items has gone down. The number of multiple choice items have gone up.
The state has touted Norman Webb's scheme called Depth of Knowledge (a Benjamin Bloom "inspired" Taxonomy of Educational Objectives converted into complexity of content) that promises to provide a better match between content and achievement standards. Part of the problem is that it's not possible to write a multiple choice question at the deepest levels of knowledge. Another problem is that the new test takes Kentucky further away from a performance-based assessment, as required by law.
One teacher explained that, in the past, questions might require a correct response PLUS an explanation of the circumstances. The teacher said now, that same kind of item would be broken into two questions, both requiring a lower level of thinking.
If this is true, then we can predict with some confidence that scores all over the state are going to rise.
But this will be difficult to demonstrate without a side-by-side comparison of the old test and the new test, and that information isn't likely to be made available due to issues of test security. Also, since the new test is substantially different from the old test, scores will not be technically comparable. Statisticians are in a position to perform magical deeds of student achievement denied even to the most gifted teachers.
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