Workbook’s Similar Questions Don’t Compromise State Test, Publisher Says

The president of the company that publishes a state-mandated student achievement test said the exam has not been compromised by similar questions in a math workbook.

Two practice tests in the workbook were nearly identical to portions of the Stanford Achievement Test Ninth Edition, the Escondido-based North County Times reported last month.

But the Stanford 9 has “internal design features” that differ from the practice tests, Eugene T. Paslov, president of Harcourt Educational Measurement, said in a letter to the State Board of Education.

The secrecy of the Stanford 9 is considered paramount because it is the only test that measures public school performance in the state.

Paslov wrote that he realizes “charges of security violations of any statewide testing program raise red flags. . . . It brings into question the integrity of the entire [testing] program.”

The state is demanding that Harcourt provide written evidence that the test is unscathed, said John Mockler, executive director of the State Board of Education.

The sixth-grade math workbook was produced by a Harcourt rival, Houghton Mifflin subsidiary McDougall Littell. It contained 78 questions identical in concept and order to questions on the Stanford 9. Some wording was changed. A Stanford 9 question on probability used the example of marbles in a sack, for instance, while the workbook used balls in a sack.

California’s education code bars instructors from teaching the actual Stanford 9 but it allows them to use similar questions.