Wednesday, May 8, 2019 – In Honor of Standardized Testing or STARR This Post
In honor of standardized tests, let’s do a math word problem.
How much does it cost to score one assessment in one content area in Texas?
Let’s pretend the content area is English Language/Arts, Grade Five.
You will need to know how many fifth graders across Texas took the test. Call somebody at TEA and find an answer you like or Google it and figure a reasonable sum. Or just use 80,000. That is the current number possibly held back this year due to performance. Now that deserves an F-bomb!
Proceeding onward with the number of scorers. Remember, you are only looking at costs for scoring one content area for one grade level. Ready?
At one assessment site, there are two shifts of scorers.
1st shift clocks in at 8:00 am and clocks out at 4:30 pm. This shift makes $11.50 per hour.
2nd shift clocks in at 5:00 pm and clocks out at 10:30 pm. This shift makes $12.50 per hour.
Both shifts receive a non-paid 30-minute lunch and two non-paid 15-minute breaks.
If you are unable to meet your scoring daily and/or weekly quota, you are dismissed. If you miss more than three days during the testing period, you are dismissed.
There are five rooms of scorers, plus a number of supervisors and other ancillary people. Each room has 150 Dell Computers.
A standard scoring period is about six weeks – Monday through Saturday. One is not required to work on Saturdays so factor about 75 scorers for Saturdays. Saturday scorers make $12.50 per hour.
The amount you come up with reflects the amount paid to score one grade level, one content area, for six weeks. You can either show your work or just give an F-bomb to the world of assessment.
For extra credit calculate the costs for other content areas and grade levels being scored.
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