The Cincinnati Enquirer has a report on how Ohio schools are not going to be ready for the new online PARCC tests that are scheduled to be deployed next year.

Ohio public schools appear to be far short of having enough computers to have all their students take new state-mandated tests within a four-week period beginning in the 2014-15 school year.

“With all the reductions in education funds over the last several years and the downturn in the economy, districts have struggled to be able to bring their (computer technology) up to the level that would be needed for this,” said Barbara Shaner, associate executive director of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials.

Districts could seek state permission to deliver the new tests on paper if they can’t round up enough computers, tablets and gadgets to go around, Jim Wright, director of curriculum and assessment for the Ohio Department of Education, said. A student taking a paper test could be at a disadvantage, though. While the paper tests won’t have substantially different questions, a student taking the test online will have the benefit of audio and visual prompts as well as online tasks that show their work on computer, said Chad Colby, a spokesman for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

The state really does need to step up and help districts fund this costly mandate that has been foisted upon them. Added to this, the computer industry is going through significant changes as more and more people move away from the traditional desktops and laptops in favor of the simpler more portable tablets. School districts could find themselves having to make costly investments again in the near future if they pick the wrong technologies.

The article makes note of the possibility of paper based test takers being at a possible disadvantage over those taking the computer based tests. There has been a significant amount of research over the years on this, and the results seem to indicate the opposite effect - that computer based test takers score lower than paper based tests.

The comparability of test scores based on online versus paper testing has been studied for more than 20 years. Reviews of the comparability literature research were reported by Mazzeo and Harvey (1988), who reported mixed results, and Drasgow (1993), who concluded that there were essentially no differences in examinee scores by mode-of-administration for power tests. Paek (2005) provided a summary of more recent comparability research and concluded that, in general, computer and paper versions of traditional multiple-choice tests are comparable across grades and academic subjects. However, when tests are timed, differential speededness can lead to mode effects. For example, a recent study by Ito and Sykes (2004) reported significantly lower performance on timed web-based norm-referenced tests at grades 4-12 compared with paper versions. These differences seemed to occur because students needed more time on the web-based test than they did on the paper test. Pommerich (2004) reported evidence of mode differences due to differential speededness in tests given at grades 11 and 12, but in her study online performance on questions near the end of several tests was higher than paper performance on these same items. She hypothesized that students who are rushed for time might actually benefit from testing online because the computer makes it easier to respond and move quickly from item to item.

A number of studies have suggested that no mode differences can be expected when individual test items can be presented within a single screen (Poggio, Glassnapp, Yang, & Poggio, 2005; Hetter, Segall & Bloxom, 1997; Bergstrom, 1992; Spray, Ackerman, Reckase, & Carlson, 1989). However, when items are associated with text that requires scrolling, such as is typically the case with reading tests, studies have indicated lower performance for students testing online (O’Malley, 2005; Pommerich, 2004; Bridgeman, Lennon, & Jackenthal, 2003; Choi & Tinkler, 2002; Bergstrom, 1992)