I came across a story that paints a picture of how public policy, business, and technology should intersect but don't, at least yet.
With the Federal adoption of No Child Left Behind, an enormous testing industry has grown up. An additional 56 million standardized tests are given each year across the country. "It's not entirely a monopoly, but it is an oligopoly, with very little regulation," said Walter Haney, professor at the Center for the Study of Testing Evaluation and Educational Policy at Boston College.
The big 4 test manufacturers are all under the same pressures to deliver, score, and summarize the test scores with seasonal requirements mandated by the NCLB law. As the stakes rise each year cracks are beginning to appear. Illinois was the first to miss the mandated reporting deadlines due to problems in its vendor relationship. At least five other states have reported significant problems with their testing vendors. Most of these major vendors have taken on testing as an extension of their traditional textbook publishing business
For the students , schools, and local school districts errors with these standardized tests can cause intense problems.
Can technology be used to improve the speed and efficiency of this system? Well, one of the first rules for deploying technology is to make sure that the process requiring improvement is actually the right process. Speeding up a bad process simply results in poor results faster.
Getting five 9s of error free results on a standardized document in a timely manner does seem doable. It is obvious that the testing industry needs to be taken back to school.
