Here's what happened. My DD is in third grade. Her teacher went on maternity leave and DD's class has a long-term sub. Then, the long-term sub had a family emergency and asked a retired teacher friend of hers (Mrs. H) to sub for her. On her first day there, I talked to Mrs. H after school about the weekly mathlab that I run. She seemed very elderly and like she had almost no short-term memory. For instance, I told her that Mathlab was on Thursday and 10 seconds later she was saying it was on Tuesday. This was not the only example of her lapses during our conversation.
The next morning, I talked to the principal privately and told her that I didn't think Mrs. H was up to administering the test and why. She seemed to take me very seriously. So I was surprised when, a week later (yesterday), Mrs. H was there administering the CAT/6. I thought that the principal had checked her out and decided it would be ok.
That afternoon I picked DD up from school and she told me that she was really frustrated because Mrs. H wouldn't listen to her. Apparently, DD noticed that the wrong name was on her test booklet and in fact on everyone's test booklet. Mrs. H had just handed them out randomly! And not asked the kids to check the names! And when DD tried to point out the error she was told to "be quiet." So they did the whole first section of the test in the wrong booklets.
Then, Mrs. H realized the error and had them switch booklets and then change the answers to their own answers. I can't imagine that this procedure was very accurate, knowing 3rd graders. Besides, a teacher friend of mine told me that the booklets are not all the same. There are several versions.
When DD told me that, I took her straight to the principal and had her tell the principal what happened. Mrs. H was gone this morning and there was a different sub there. But what about the first part of the test? Shouldn't that be invalidated? My teacher friend seemed to think something like this is a disaster that would lead to an audit of the school!
I am going to talk to the principal again, but I am wondering what the rules are for reporting testing irregularities. Is the principal required to report this? What if she doesn't?
