One Clear Voice

Topic:

Should teachers send major test papers home?
October, 2006

Overview:

The administration of the Tupelo Public School District was recently asked, “Why don’t teachers send major test papers home?”  This question was raised at one of last year’s Parent Council meetings, and the question was also directed to members of the TPSD Board of Trustees.  The school board then directed Dr. Randy McCoy to research this situation and to report his findings to them upon completion of his review.

In order to gain information from TPSD teachers about the subject of whether or not teachers should send major test papers home, Dr. McCoy held meetings with a group of teachers at Tupelo Middle School as well as at Tupelo High School.  The middle school and the high school teachers were selected for these meetings because most of the questions from parents dealt primarily with test papers at these two schools.

Dr. McCoy compiled the following list of comments from those meetings, and he reported these teacher comments and observations to the Board of Trustees at its September 26, 2006 meeting:

Consensus of Teachers:

Major tests, as a general rule, should not be sent home.

Teacher Comments and Factors To Be Considered:

• Students are frequently required to maintain a grade sheet in their notebook or binder in order to keep an up-to-date record of all grades on graded assignments.  In fact, some teachers even require parent signatures on this grade sheet.
  
  
• Tests are kept in class sets or in folders where they can easily be accessed for parent conferences.
  
  
• Often before examinations students are permitted to carry tests home to study, but they must return these tests on the day of the examination.
  
  
• Many major tests are departmental tests.  In other words, all teachers in that department administer the same tests.  As a result, test security and the protection of departmental test items becomes a major issue or concern.
  
  
• Most review sheets and materials that are distributed to the students prior to the test (day) usually include most or all of the items that are questioned on the test anyway.
  
  
• When tests are handed back to the students, test items are reviewed, questions about the test items are answered, and reasons are explained concerning why an answer is correct or incorrect.  Additionally, some teachers even award bonus points for reworking or correcting incorrect test items.
  
  
• All teachers have a practice that allows them to work with the parents, if the parents really want to see the tests.  Teachers are often willing to make copies of the tests for parents to review provided that they return the copies to the teacher.
  
  
• Teachers expressed a concern about the possibility of students developing “test item banks” that may be passed along or even sold to other students.
  
  
• Teachers reported occasions in the past where completed workbooks and study sheets have been sold or passed from student to student.  It has even been documented that some of these workbooks and/or study sheets have been sold for as much as $ 20.00.
  
  
• Teachers commented that often low-scoring papers—the ones that most need to be reviewed by parents—are the very ones that tend to “not get home.”

• In most content areas, there are only a limited number of ways to construct strong, valid test questions.  Test items such as these are not easy to develop, and test construction by the teacher often requires a great deal of time. The number of good test questions is not infinite.  As a result, it is absolutely essential to maintain the integrity of these test items.
  
  
• Obviously, teachers voiced concerns over the accuracy and validity of student assessment based on tests that have been comprised because   students have been permitted to prepare for the test in an unfair manner.
  

Further Info:

The observations and comments made by these teachers in their meetings with Dr. McCoy were well taken.  Dr. McCoy was very careful to accurately collect and to present these teacher opinions to the Board of Trustees, and  the Board was very understanding of how teachers generally feel about this matter. 

Having said this, all teachers in the Tupelo Public School District are reminded that our district has a commitment and an obligation to communicate with parents openly and freely about the academic

performance of their children.  Teachers are strongly encouraged to make maximum use of E-mails, telephone calls, counselor assistance, parent-teacher conferences, grade sheets kept in student notebooks or binders, review materials handed out to students prior to testing, thorough discussion and examination of test papers when these papers have been corrected/graded, allowing students to carry home any test papers that teachers may deem permissible to leave the classroom, etc.

You, as TPSD teachers, are professional educators, and the district respects and appreciates your careful consideration of how to best communicate with parents about student performance on tests.  To achieve the level of success in educating our students that the Tupelo Public School District expects, we must all work together—teachers, students, parents, administrators, the community, etc., and timely, effective communication certainly is at the very heart of this process.