ASKing for Secret Information on a Student Proficiency Test?

An evaluation question on this year's standardized test is catching attention from parents the state over: they want to know why their children were asked about their ability to keep secrets.

According to the Asbury Park Press, on this year's ASK, around 4,000 students in some 15 districts statewide may have been encouraged to write about whether they have a secret and if it is hard to keep it.

That language was enough to trigger some parents in Marlboro into action, but here in Collingswood, Superintendent Scott Oswald says his phone hasn't been ringing off the hook.

Oswald says that although he hasn’t heard complaints from any Collingswood parents, the only way the district ever discovers whether such a question is on the test is if children come home and talk about it.

“I wouldn’t see it as someone trying to do something nefarious," Oswald said. "During my tenure, nobody’s trying to get any deep-seated secrets. If [the test-makers] could have a do-over, I think they would.”

Furthermore, test-makers try out new material all the time, Oswald says. If the :secrets" question wasn't on the menu for Collingswood students during the 2012 ASK, "we were field-testing something else," he says.

What test scorers should be reading the results for is the quality of the writing, not the content of the response, Oswald says. But in his experience, test scorers only earn a modest hourly rate and may not necessarily have an educational background. Yet they are still asked to be on the lookout for issues above their pay grade.

Moreover, he says, competing policy and research agendas can make the Department of Education "the most dysfunctional place I’ve ever worked,” Oswald says.

Earlier in his career—and not in Collingswood—Oswald recollects one instance of a student writing sample that demonstrated suicidal ideation. A test scorer reported it, and the district interceded.

Sometimes, Oswald says, students who are very bright may even fictionalize an answer they know will trigger controversy, either out of boredom or a desire to agitate. It then becomes the burden of the district to evaluate the response.

“That’s a position we find ourselves in every day,” he says. “No matter what we do, we’re not going to be right.

"Every decision we make, someone is going to love it; someone is going to hate it," he says. "My rule of thumb is that we try to be as reasonable as we can be."