What’s on the Test?

If you’ve ever wondered about the questions on our state’s end-of-grade and end-of-course tests for public school students, you’re not alone. John Locke Foundation Director of Education Studies Terry Stoops asked university professors from around the state to analyze questions on several tests. In this interview, Stoops explains what the professors had to say about the material being used to determine whether students have mastered important material. Whether you’re a parent or not, this is information you should know.

Stoops: We sent 500 surveys to professors all across the state — professors of political science and of economics and of business — and we sent these out to public universities [and] private universities throughout the state and asked them to evaluate these test questions. Now, if they all came back to me and said, “These test questions are excellent, the testing program is doing a great job,” then that’s what my report would say. I wasn’t looking for a certain answer. I simply wanted to see what the scholarly community in North Carolina thought about these test questions, whether we should praise or whether we should criticize the state tests.

Martinez: And what does the scholarly community think?

Stoops: Well, the overwhelming majority of the responses that I received express concern over these test questions. There were disagreements whether the answers were right. There were disagreements about whether the test questions lent themselves to a specific answer. There was a lot of disagreement about possible answers on these tests. One of the things I do in my report is I document all of the comments that were left on the surveys, because I gave the professors an opportunity to write comments about these test questions. So every one of those comments is in the report, and they’re very, very revealing.

Martinez: Did you get responses from them, Terry, that were more, “Hey, this is wrong,” or was it more about interpretation? Were their comments about the answers or the questions themselves?

Stoops: We got truly a mix. It’s really down the middle. There were professors that believed that none of the answers provided were correct. There was one question on the economics test that professors answered [and] thought that different answers were correct.

Martinez: So even the professors disagreed in that case.