What's it worth if it isn't scored accurately?

SCores are being held consant.

The next time your principal complains about how the scores aren't going up, think about this.

From the Loneliness of the Long Distance Test Scorer: For some mysterious reason, unbeknownst to test scorers, the scores we are giving are supposed to closely match those given in previous years. So if 40 percent of papers received 3s the previous year (on a scale of 1 to 6), then a similar percentage should receive 3s this year. Lest you think this is an isolated experience, Farley cites similar stories from his fourteen-year test-scoring career in his book, reporting instances where project managers announced that scoring would have to be changed because “our numbers don’t match up with what the psychometricians [the stats people] predicted.”

Let's hear it for testing!

The whole article is interesting, but that line caught my eye.