REMIND ME WHY HIGH-STAKES TESTING IS A GOOD IDEA. One of the fringe benefits of being on the "why am I here?" committee is that I receive the weekly missive from the State Superintendent of Education. The missive just before spring break was not pleasant.

State Superintendent of Education Randy Dunn today announced that Harcourt Assessment, a company that had contracted with the Illinois State Board of Education to deliver Illinois Standards Achievement Test materials to Illinois school districts, has failed to meet its contractual obligation with the state.

Harcourt isn't playing well in Peoria.

House Republicans want state school Superintendent Randy Dunn to appear at a legislative hearing and answer questions about a testing company's blunders in delivering materials that students need for the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests.

They're not making many friends in the land of the Burlingtons.

School administrators across Illinois, including in Riverside, Brookfield and North Riverside, hit the panic button last week when materials for the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) were late.

Most schools began testing Monday in grades three through eight, but by Thursday many school districts hadn’t yet received their test booklets and other materials students needed to complete the tests.

By Monday, districts in the Landmark coverage area had, indeed, begun testing for all students, but there were plenty of tense moments, even into Monday morning.

There's trouble in River City. (It starts with a T which rhymes with T and it stands for "Tests.")

The most important standardized test that Illinois students take each year is arriving late or with incomplete or incorrect information to several school districts, prompting not only significant stress for educators, but also questions about whether the tests will be valid.

The Illinois Standards Achievement Test, which determines whether a school is on the federal No Child Left Behind watch list, is causing problems specifically for administrators and teachers in Rock Island and East Moline.

Reports of Illinois's troubles show them in Missouri.

State testing in Illinois got off to a rocky start last week after school districts across the state discovered missing and flawed tests.Teachers were angry. Administrators were frustrated. In districts that were forced to postpone the tests, students, who had spent months preparing, felt let down. Illinois officials questioned whether they should fire Texas-based Harcourt Assessment Inc., the company hired to administer the
tests.

Perhaps Illinois officials ought to read some weblogs. A search of the archives at testing guru Number 2 Pencil reveals several stories about Harcourt's troubles as long as four years ago.

To follow up my recent skepticism about standardized tests for colleges ... let's not talk about any market tests for high-stakes testing until the testing companies working with the common schools start passing their market tests. Alternatively, if you're going to introduce standardized tests in some colleges, I volunteer for the control group.