Dirty work on standardized tests

I actually enjoyed taking the standardized tests in school. It was a whole afternoon of not having to do any writing. Most of the time, I finished the test way ahead of the rest of the class and I was able to spend class time on one of my favorite hobbies: drawing.

When we took the tests, we were told that no one at the school, including the teachers, was going to know how we answered the questions. We would just receive a total score when the results came back about two months later and that the tests would not have an impact on our report cards.

The teachers never explained that their jobs somewhat depended on the outcome of these tests. If it looked like the students were not learning the bare minimum in the lessons, there could be consequences. As I've mentioned before, I felt like I was kept in regular classes with other advanced students so that we could raise the average score on the standardized tests and make the teachers look better.

When I took the test in the fourth grade, I was on the English section. One part of the test had us do "This is to this as that is to _______" comparisons. This was fairly easy to understand. However, one of the statements was rather unusual. I do not remember the wording of the question, but it had to do with scuba diving. I also don't remember all of the choices, but I do recall that "Frogman" was one of the answers. That seemed to be the only one that fit with scuba diving and that's what I chose, but I was aware it was probably the wrong answer.

When Dad drove me home from school that day, he got mad at me because I had picked some really stupid answers on the test. I thought that he wasn't supposed to know how I answered, but I didn't question him about it. Later, I figured that my teacher had probably gone through the test and punched out holes on an answer sheet with the correct answers and compared it with some of the students' sheets. She must have told my father about my mistakes.

I consider that some sort of fraud, because it appeared that the people conducting the test lied to us about the teachers not knowing our answers. I'm also surprised that the testers would let the teachers come anywhere near our answer sheets. However, I guess they need the teachers to inspect the sheets to make sure the students had put their correct names on the test. The testers wouldn't be able to do that efficiently. It would be during this point that the teacher would have had an opportunity to quickly compare answers on the sheets.

I read a story recently about how some teachers in some school got a hold of the sheets and started erasing students' answers and putting in the correct ones. They got fired anyway. However, I am surprised that would happen in this day and age. You would think they'd come up with answer sheets pre-printed with the students' names on them.

Anyway, when I took the test in the fourth grade, I don't think they had that much of an effect on the staff, because everybody kept their jobs the next year. I really don't think they ever had anything to worry about.