Will new exams make the grade?

Bubbling in multiple-choice answers doesn't give a sophisticated picture of students' skills, most would agree.

But North Carolina's new exams,  which include open-ended questions,  are raising plenty of questions.

Last week,  after the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board got a briefing on the new "measures of student learning"  tests,  state officials announced they'd give districts a little more time to hash out answers.  The state will not require high school students to take the new tests at the end of first-semester courses,  Rebecca  Garland,  the state's chief academic officer,  told me Friday.

The multiple-choice exams North Carolina has relied on for years have one big advantage:  They're cheap and quick to score with computer scanners.  Items that require students to solve a math problem or write an answer require human eyes.  And that's where things get complicated.

Superintendent Heath Morrison and new Chief Accountability Officer Frank Barnes told the CMS board last week that teachers will be trained to score the new tests in a process similar to that used for grading Advanced Placement exams.  That requires getting skilled teachers to volunteer,  training them to do consistent scoring and then putting them to work on the actual exams.  Teachers will be paid for their after-hours work,  Morrison said,  but the cost is unknown because CMS leaders haven't seen the tests and don't know how many open-ended questions will be included.

Garland said Friday that local officials won't see the tests until it's time to give them to students.  That's standard testing security,  so no one can unfairly coach students to success.  But she said no test will have more than six open-ended,  or "constructed response,"  questions.  And she said those questions will require one-paragraph answers at most,  not a full essay.

In the next couple of weeks,  Garland said,  teachers will start getting more specifics about the tests.  And she said the state will provide training for teachers who will score the exams.

The tests are not just designed to gauge student skills but teacher effectiveness.  And that makes things a whole lot stickier.

CMS has decided to make the new exams count for 25 percent of a student's grade for that class  (for a list of classes involved,  read the CMS presentation).  That's to motivate students to take the exams seriously,  so teachers won't be penalized for kids who just aren't trying.  But Morrison says he's still wavering on whether that's fair to seniors,  whose graduation could be sidetracked by a test that's new and unproven.  North Carolina has a history of rolling out new tests that turn out to be flawed  (I suspect other states do, too).  The new state tests will take the place of teachers' finals to avoid overtesting.

Teachers who give any of the new state tests this year will get a  "growth score"  on their evaluation,  though it will be  "for information only,"  CMS Deputy Superintendent Ann Clark said.  She said the state has assured CMS  "they have the tools to make that calculation,"  even though the ratings will be based on brand-new tests.  After three years of test-score data pile up,  those ratings will start to count toward evaluations and could ultimately cost persistent low-performers their jobs.

Garland said the growth ratings, which are generated by the SAS analytics company headquartered in Cary, will be similar to what teachers are already seeing if they give end-of-grade and end-of-course exams.  Teachers will get a numerical score and a label of met, exceeded or did not meet expectations.

Garland noted that some states getting federal Race To The Top money are requiring each district to come up with its own program for rating teachers on student growth.  As CMS can testify,  that's expensive, complex and politically explosive.  Garland said North Carolina is taking on that task, but  "we have tried to be as flexible as we can with the districts."

Meanwhile,  no matter how the details are worked out,  some believe the whole testing-and-rating path is the wrong one.

"As a teacher,  I want to know what my weaknesses are so that I can improve,  but the value-added assessment currently in vogue doesn't do that.  No matter who claims it does,  no matter how inevitable it feels,"  S.C. teacher Kay McSpadden wrote in a recent guest column in the Observer.