Reply to Has Anyone Been Able to See Their Child's Mid-Term Exams?

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Reply to "Has Anyone Been Able to See Their Child's Mid-Term Exams?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OK Einstein, who's going to write a new exam EVERY SEMESTER so a few helicopter parents can demand to take snowflake's exam home?  The classroom teachers?  Who's going to pay for them to do this?  Do you have any clue how long it takes to produce a valid final exam?[/quote]

Whatever valid means? I used to teach college. And I wrote new exam every semester. So were all my colleagues. All my middle school and high school exams were public after it was done. Why is the MCPS so special? [/quote]

I'm the FERPA poster.  I agree that parents and children should have access to copies of exams. It's not about being a "snowflake".  Looking at your mistakes and understanding why you made them and learning to correct/avoid them is an important part of the learning cycle.  All children, snowflakes or not, should be doing this as part of their regular class work.  It's a normal part of teaching and as important as teaching the material in the first place.

Handing back copies of the exams isn't done for a lot of reasons, all of which together mean that in order to do so, the school district would have to spend a lot more on test development.  Schools want consistency across the county (especially at the middle and high school levels).  The county wants to ensure that all kids in Algebra, for example, are being taught and tested on the same things.  So, they want teachers to administer the same unit and final exams.  I think that's a reasonable goal which tries to ensure equity across diverse schools.  Another reason is test security.  The county wants to make sure that kids (and teachers) aren't cheating to make it look like they're learning.

IMO, I think a school district should be spending more on test development every year.  When I have looked at my child's unit tests, I have seen some very poorly designed questions, which in a more rigorous test development environment would probably have been weeded out.  I have also seen exams constructed by teachers, which have included wrong answers!

I think it would be helpful if school districts were constantly adding to the question pool and beta-testing them, like the SAT.  Kids could even have access to old tests for studying (some good teachers do provide this).  But, again, that would require more money, and a more sophisticated central testing staff.  I wouldn't hold my breath for either of those.

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