1975-11-24-SC-min - Laserfiche WebLink

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Lexington School Committee Minutes - November 24, 1975 Page 224 Dr. Fritz Mosher cited the importance of local level decision-making about a testing program. He noted that special programs are peculiar to each school, and tests should be geared to those programs. Dr. Mosher said that several aspects of WISC should be evaluated: how are the results used, is it too expensive, what is the system attempting to measure? If it is deemed too expensive and its utility is questionable, then perhaps a trade-off for a staff member would be appropriate. Turning to the question of norm-referenced vs. criterion referenced testing, Dr. Mosher made several points. There are reasons, he said, to question the appropriateness of norm-referenced testing. 1) control for background will "wash" out" the differences in the things that schools and systems do 2) it would be hard to tell if Lexington is doing better than other systems from outcomes on the kinds of tests that Lexington uses 3) reported scores are interpreted differently by different teachers.. 4) there is danger for a student whose scores indicate that he is where he is expected. The test fails to be an alarm and may tend to be a sedative. Criterion reference tests, he noted, have the weakness of not pro- viding external reference for a school system. However, they are more useful to teachers because they test whether or not a student is learning what the teacher (school, system) wants him to learn. Mrs. Helen Grush was the final guest speaker. She admitted that her ' "bias" is the underachiever, the student with learning disability. She views the WISC as a good clinical instrument, noting, however, that the fees paid to Lexington testers may attract less qualified personnel. She concluded that it would probably be a better idea to eliminate individual IQ testing at the second grade level, to administer IQ tests later, where necessary to provide more qualified testers, and to interpret results more carefully to teachers and parent. Mrs. Grush had high praise for the LIRSP program, though she was con- cerned about several sections of it, and questioned what was happening to students not exposed to it. She took special note of the Lexington Lang- uage Arts program, and hoped that it could be combined with LIRSP. A discussion period followed the speaker's presentation. In answer to a question about staff reactions to testing, Alice Bailey, a teacher at Hastings School and a member of the original testing committee, commented on a questionnaire distributed to 384 Lexington staff members by that committee. She indicated that the results of the poll revealed concern about the deleterious effects of the testing program on students. Weak- nesses noted included lack of challenge for brighter students, too much challenge for less able students, length of administration time, and in- appropriate timing of the tests in the academic year, making results virt- ually useless by the time they were available.