I'm a parent and would rather have my child's teacher making and grading tests than anyone else. Who knows my child's academic ability better than the teacher? The teacher spends at least a quarter of school with my child (some all year)and he/she understands what my child is thinking and what my child means when my child is writing. Children cannot always explain themselves adequately and the teacher, after having been with my child so long, knows better than anyone else what my child's intent is. A computer can't catch those nuances. Don't even get me started about the subjectivity of poetry on standarized testing!

Teachers who have been well-educated know how to write and score effective tests, and we do so to lead our students' learning and our instruction. This is what tests are for. Being able to find patterns or trends in student errors is invaluable to a teacher's practice, and it is impossible when we're not allowed to grade our own papers. Sure, we can do line item analyses, but the qualitative is just as important (if not more so) as the quantitative.

Arthur. You know how much I share your outrage and concern. For a long time we had two worlds of testing...the ones we created that were far more authentic means of appraising our student's growth as a student, and those passed down from the state. For years those were primarily Regent's Exams at the high school level.

Although written by teachers and corresponding to the NYC syllabi (that was a guideline, not a mandate) these exams were often faulty, unwieldy, and inauthentic measures.

For years we gave them and marked them as in school committees. Multiple choice were graded by a scantron. 2 different readers read each essay. No one knew each kid for the papers graded were by student id #. Only when transposed onto a grade sheet were scores finally known. For each kid who barely failed a process was in place for the Dep't AP to re read and see if there were errors made in the scoring to ensure the credibility of the failing grade, not a passing one.

We ate, drank (non- alcohol), kibitzed, and shared funny stuff we saw. Of ten we asked other trusted colleagues for advice. Always trusted though to do the job right because we cared and had integrity.

Of course, nowadays we are being treated as the Lowest Common Denominator. We are all treated as miscreants who cannot be trusted. According to state politicized folk, we can’t be trusted to make, mark, or even perhaps to monitor tests.

Now we are not to be trusted to write lesson plans, unit plans, curricula, or the more authentic assessments that have to be developed along with what we teach.

The irony here is what we did works far better than this new budget based, data collection of psychometrical developed standardized profit makers.

But what do we know? All we are are teachers!

Additionally, the cost to Districts for substitute teachers for scoring needs to be mentioned. A Social Studies teacher in our district had a sub today so that she could go to a regional scoring center to grade a total of 9 tests from another school.
And.....now that the tests have to be "certified secure" from the time they are distributed to the time they are dropped off at a regional scoring center, our Principal has made at least 3 trips of nearly 40 miles each day this week. Not only do the student lose teachers, they lose a Principal.

While you and countless others like you are honest, there are many out there who are not. Take the AP of a department that shall remain nameless here who miraculously had all her failing regents grades become passing ones over the weekend. Or, the AP who scrubbed 82's and 83's to 85's, everything between 60 and 64 to 65's and special ed kids grades to 55. And now that scores are so important this will be happening more. I don't have an answer. The new system sucks too, but having marked math regents exams for years I see where it is coming from.