On the fifth-grade math test, begun last fall, students must communicate their reasoning as well as compute. Before finalizing the tests, a citizen committee screened items for bias - racial, gender, religious. A math question was modified, for example, because it required knowing the length of a football field, something boys might be more likely to know than girls. Another committee screened for sensitivity to the community. Once a test is given, the test booklets are collected and sent by courier to Indianapolis, one of three CTB scoring centers.
Machines can score multiplechoice questions quickly and cheaply.
Written responses discourage guessing, but scoring takes longer, costs more and is more subjective. A virtual army of nearly 500 hand-scorers will be recruited and trained to score tests taken by 200,000 Colorado students this spring. A college degree is required. Retirees, former teachers and recent college graduates are among those who typically come forward. It takes at least three weeks to score the Colorado tests.