Editorial: Let’s test the testers

Thursday, Sept. 4, 2003 | 8:57 a.m.

Harcourt Education Measurement, the company that grades standardized tests for students, has made two huge blunders in the past two years. This year it sent out incorrect test scores for 21,000 third and fifth graders in 80 Nevada schools. Last year a scoring error by the company resulted in the company wrongly informing 736 high school sophomores and juniors that they had failed the high school proficiency math test. It doesn't diminish the mistakes here, but a story in Monday's New York Times shows we're not alone, as similar errors have cropped up all around the nation by a number of testing companies. In Georgia, for example, state officials scrapped statewide exams for more than 600,000 fifth graders after the third error in just three years was found in the tests.

Education analysts told the Times that the reasons for the mistakes are due in part to some testing companies cutting corners to make money. In other cases, because the federal government and state governments are requiring the use of so many more achievement tests, the companies' resources are stretched thin as they take on more than they can handle. What's worrisome is that we have no real knowledge of just how widespread the mistakes are -- and how much goes unreported -- because there is no regulation of the industry. Experts are divided on whether the federal government or an independent commission should oversee testing companies. What is clear is that testing mistakes are intolerable, especially when the stakes are so high for the students. Congress should create some form of oversight panel so that the testers themselves are subjected to rigorous r eview.