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Underpaid and Poorly Trained and None Qualified to be Scoring Those Kids
No one talks about the real inadequacy of the standardized testing process: the relationship the kid, the testee, had with me, the test scorer. I was underpaid, treated without dignity and reminded daily that I was disposable--and I held the power to affect the lives of thousands of kids.

We were English and art graduates, musicians, displaced tradespeople and telemarketers. Some of us were so spectacularly sociopathic that we could find no other work. Some of the scorers had earned their degrees in prison . . . .

The state of Pennsylvania paid the Minnesota-based test-scoring company I worked for $12 million to score a two-question essay test. Here's what that money bought: Two hundred or so $6-an-hour test scorers for a couple of weeks . . .Oh yes, and lawyers' fees, when the test turned out to be mis-scored. . . .
Each day, I read hundreds of tests. Each question got no more than 30 seconds of my attention, although some took less--kids routinely left whole tests or questions blank. I tried not to think about the panic or sense of futility that must have overwhelmed these kids. Fortunately for us, there were always five hilarious morons for every sad kid stricken with mute panic. If a child was particularly funny, or especially dim, his or her test was posted in the hallway for entertainment. There were hundreds of them, and we'd file along the hall and hoot over them during lunch. . . .

We all understood that the kids behind the tests were real, and we never intentionally tried to screw them. But discomfort, resentment and tedium no doubt caused our minds to wander and our scores to get sloppy. . . We were underpaid and poorly trained and none of us was qualified to be scoring those kids.

— Amy Weivoda
We Hung the Most Dimwitted Essays on the Wall
Salon.com
June 5, 2002
http://salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/06/05/scorer/index.html

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