What does it cost to ask a even a single open-ended question?
$1.4 to $2.4 million! Illinois ISBE officials estimate that asking a single open-ended question in the state ISAT math test triples or quintuples the cost of administering the test. From the Chicago Tribune, January 8, 2004: “State officials estimate that it would cost an extra $2 million to $3 million to include one open question for every grade on these two tests. By contrast, the state’s social science test, which is all multiple-choice and is scored automatically by computers, would cost about $600,000 to administer and score.” • Here is a crucially vital question about open-ended test questions: Who actually scores these tests? Read on… • “Illinois … encourage[s] the learning of vacuous thinking, thinking without substance … Kids are passing the tests by writing drivel.” Standardized Writing Assessments May Be Harmful To Children’s Learning, University of Chicago Chronicle, July 11, 2002, Volume 21, No. 18. Excerpt: “George Hillocks Jr., Professor in English Language & Liter
