Standardized Testing

[PhilFish]

I'm not certain I buy that. My family wasn't rich, and there certainly weren't any government programs for the children of truckdrivers in the 60s and 70s when I was a child. From the standpoint of being ignored by anyone upper class, we were as ignored as anyone else.

I tend to agree.

 

[trapdoor]

Yeah-- I just saw something that said only 20% of Americans could name the three branches of government, and that some absurdly low percentage couldn't name even one freedom protected by the First Amendment. That's grade-school material! Comically, quite a few thought the first amendment dealt with guaranteeing the right to own a pet (around 1/5).

Anyway, here's a great book I'd recommend to just about anyone:

http://www.amazon.com/An-Incomplete-Education-Revised-Edition/dp/0345391373

I first read it in high school, but there's a new edition, now. It's written in a light, sometimes jokey manner, but is designed to fill in the gaps on all the stuff you were supposed to learn but didn't, on pretty much any academic topic.... theory of relativity, transcendentalism, the operas of Mozart, famous sociological concepts, and so on.

Back when Michael Milliken was in the news, I had a conversation with a young man who was a business major in college, who didn't know who Milliken was. That intrigued me as I thought Milliken's junk bond scandal would be right up his alley.

So, I conducted a test. The young man in question was from Independence, Mo. I asked him if he could tell me the president who served between FDR and Eisenhower. Although he was from Harry Truman's own town, he could not do so.

I suggested he sew his high school for failing to provide him with a high school education.

 

[connieb]

Back when Michael Milliken was in the news, I had a conversation with a young man who was a business major in college, who didn't know who Milliken was. That intrigued me as I thought Milliken's junk bond scandal would be right up his alley.

So, I conducted a test. The young man in question was from Independence, Mo. I asked him if he could tell me the president who served between FDR and Eisenhower. Although he was from Harry Truman's own town, he could not do so.

I suggested he sew his high school for failing to provide him with a high school education.

I love history and always enjoyed history but found all through school there was a huge gulf of history classes and education past WWII. Every US History class I ever took sort of stopped at WWII..... maybe got as far as the Korean War. NEVER the Viet Nam war era. It was almost like thy considered anything past WWII to be too recent to be "history". I still, even after College, would mostly have to piece together the history of the time between WWII and the Mid - 80's ( when I was really old enough to be aware of current events) based on independent reading, studying, learning, what you learn from studying a particular other subject or course, movies, TV, family recollections, etc. I would actually enjoy a formal history class of what is more or less the "recent" history.


connie

 

[worldlymrb]

My 2cents on test standardization.

I believe test standardization should set minimum standards that is appropriate for the local community at the county/state level.

The best environment would be for parents/students to have access to more choices in their educational preferences.

 

[as seen on tv]

too funny. the usual response to such puffery is "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" (instead of hanging out here all day long?)

its amazing that we endorse testing for things like pentagon weapons systems, college admission, website security; welfare eligibilty; every sort of disease; drivers licenses; citizenship, etc . . .

but the ONE AND ONLY thing where testing doesn't work is public school progress????

too absurd.

 

[CatsEye]

Any comparison of just white students in the US versus all of Finland is going to be misleading, in that it effectively allows the US disproportionately to ignore the performance of its economic underclass, while not allowing Finland to do the same.

Anyway, I have a theory that race is part of the reason our underclass underperforms so badly compared to many other countries. In the US, the political and economic elite tends to look very different, in an obvious and superficial way, from the lower class, and that makes it easier, psychologically, for the elite to write off those who are struggling. In a place like Finland (or, to a lesser extent, Massachusetts), when there is a group of people struggling for socio-economic reasons, there's a greater natural sympathy for them among the political and economic elite, since the underclass looks like their own family members. Thus, there's more focus on fixing the problems, whereas in a place with a racially differentiated underclass, the elite is more likely to just blame the victims and allow the problems to fester indefinitely.

Finland is highly homogeneous. Poverty rate is 3%. Comparing white US with all Finland is a much fairer comparison than all US and all Finland, which is often done in our media. State comparison (eg, Massachusetts) is perhaps even a better comparison.

The point is praising Finland and bashing American schools has been a favorite script for our media for some time now. Fact is, when comparing apples to apples we match up quite well with Finland on international test scores.

 

[Renee]

We have always had standardized testing. The problem in the past was that tests weregeared more to white kids and males, but that was changing. I hear from teachers all over the country complaining about having to teach to the test ..basically they are teaching test taking skills and losing creative thinking. I don't think I would enjoy teaching in today's climate ...
My daughter is a high school counselor and she is outraged at what they are doing in her county. If a student fails a course he or she has the option to go to summer school and make it up. They then remove the failing grade. So you can not go to school for the whole year and flunk everything and then go to summer school which is easier and pass and there is no record that you ever failed . So the kid who will get a B working hard all year is the same as the kid who goofed off.

 

[Renee]

There's a high rate of attrition among teachers, and I suspect many are those who could be first-tier teachers, but realize that the same amount of work will win them vastly more income and prestige in other fields. I also think that a lot of people who would make first-tier teachers never go into the field in the first place, because they're scared off by the low pay and the disrespect teachers get these days.

And lately my busiest season is June because they need me to encourage teachers to come back for just the reasons you described. More than half leave within the first five years. If I were growing up today I probably would never have gone in for teaching. .....And I would never have known the greatest profession in the world and the joy has brought me.
When people hear I am an author, they are impressed, but being a teacher doesn't get the respect . Shouldn't be that way. I always say I am a teacher who wrote a book, not an author who taught

 

[Renee]

Languages are the toughest to hold onto. It's possible even to effectively lose one's first language, if you don't use it at all for long enough. I was never fluent in German, but I used to be able to take university-level classes in a German university, right alongside native speakers, without too much trouble. These days, I can read fairly easy novels, but that's where my skills cap out. I can mostly follow German language TV and films without subtitles, but I miss a lot, and unfamiliar vocabulary derails me for minutes at a time. When it comes to speaking, I sound like a brain-damaged second-grader, and my writing is little better.

Sounds like you're hard on yourself.

 

[Arkady]

Back when Michael Milliken was in the news, I had a conversation with a young man who was a business major in college, who didn't know who Milliken was. That intrigued me as I thought Milliken's junk bond scandal would be right up his alley.

So, I conducted a test. The young man in question was from Independence, Mo. I asked him if he could tell me the president who served between FDR and Eisenhower. Although he was from Harry Truman's own town, he could not do so.

I suggested he sew his high school for failing to provide him with a high school education.

I'm always surprised by the poor quality of primary education others receive. And it's not a new thing. I've noted the same phenomenon among my Baby Boomer relatives -- for example, one of my adult relatives didn't know what a "femur" was. I picked that up in sixth grade science class. By the time I'd finished sixth grade, I had at least a decent "Greatest Hits" knowledge of history and civics -- I might have failed your Truman test, but would have passed it by the time I finished junior high. That makes me wonder how others remained so ignorant of that material. My guess is that they get it, but are invited to store it in a way that emphasizes just the next test, so that it quickly goes out of their heads, rather than being integrated into the big picture. I'd like to see a focus, in education, on encouraging retention, though I'm not sure how you do that.

 

[Arkady]

I love history and always enjoyed history but found all through school there was a huge gulf of history classes and education past WWII. Every US History class I ever took sort of stopped at WWII..... maybe got as far as the Korean War. NEVER the Viet Nam war era. It was almost like thy considered anything past WWII to be too recent to be "history". I still, even after College, would mostly have to piece together the history of the time between WWII and the Mid - 80's ( when I was really old enough to be aware of current events) based on independent reading, studying, learning, what you learn from studying a particular other subject or course, movies, TV, family recollections, etc. I would actually enjoy a formal history class of what is more or less the "recent" history.


connie

Same. I had one teacher who was an ex-hippie and taught Korea and Vietnam, but other than that single class, we tended to stop at WWII. Worse, we tended to over-focus on just a few episodes of history: Colonization of the New World, the Revolution, the Civil War, and WWII. The vast majority of human history was ignored, and most of US history was just a tale of a few wars. I only began to broaden my conception of history when I picked up Howard Zinn's excellent "A People's History of the United States."

 

[Arkady]

too funny. the usual response to such puffery is "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" (instead of hanging out here all day long?)

its amazing that we endorse testing for things like pentagon weapons systems, college admission, website security; welfare eligibilty; every sort of disease; drivers licenses; citizenship, etc . . .

but the ONE AND ONLY thing where testing doesn't work is public school progress????

too absurd.

I think part of the push-back against using testing, at least when it comes to teacher and school system accountability, is that proponents are trying to get something for nothing. They want teachers to accept less discretion and more oversight --things that will make their already tough jobs even tougher-- with nothing in return. Understandably teachers aren't eager to agree, and trying to shame them into going along with it is unlikely to work. What you'd need, to get union buy-in, is to implement it in such a way that it would be clear benefit for the majority of teachers -- that, in exchange for standards, reduced discretion, worse job secuity and inome security, and increased oversight, the median teacher also would see a considerable uptick in average compensation. Then the majority of teachers would vote for it. But that kind of reform can't be done on the cheap.

 

[Arkady]

Finland is highly homogeneous. Poverty rate is 3%. Comparing white US with all Finland is a much fairer comparison than all US and all Finland, which is often done in our media. State comparison (eg, Massachusetts) is perhaps even a better comparison.

The point is praising Finland and bashing American schools has been a favorite script for our media for some time now. Fact is, when comparing apples to apples we match up quite well with Finland on international test scores.

Homogeneous in what sense? I often hear that said, but Finland is a country with two official languages, based on having two distinct large ethnic groups (Finnish and Swedish), along with an official regional language (for the Sami people of the North). They're also religiously diverse, with a very significant minority of non-believers. And they're politically diverse, with ten parties in parliament, and much greater ideological diversity between major politicians on the left and right than you find in the US. I suppose they're much less economically diverse than the US, given the smaller gap between rich and poor and the low poverty rate. That would suggest that perhaps a greater focus on economic equity in the US could have us competing better with the likes of Finland, academically.

 

[Arkady]

We have always had standardized testing. The problem in the past was that tests weregeared more to white kids and males, but that was changing. I hear from teachers all over the country complaining about having to teach to the test ..basically they are teaching test taking skills and losing creative thinking. I don't think I would enjoy teaching in today's climate ...
My daughter is a high school counselor and she is outraged at what they are doing in her county. If a student fails a course he or she has the option to go to summer school and make it up. They then remove the failing grade. So you can not go to school for the whole year and flunk everything and then go to summer school which is easier and pass and there is no record that you ever failed . So the kid who will get a B working hard all year is the same as the kid who goofed off.

I think a well-designed test should be able to minimize the role of test-taking skills in performance. Just to give one small example, if you have lots of small sections, with no ability to go back between sections, it minimizes the role of time-management skills for test-takers (whereas having one long test makes it much more important how well a person paced himself).

Regardless, it's not like getting rid of the test eliminates the role of non-academic skills in performance. When I was in school one thing that pissed me off royally was the tendency of socially gifted students, especially cute young girls, to work the teachers to get them to bend the rules or to allow extra credit, etc., to boost their grades. They could wind up knowing very little about the topic of the class, yet get good scores simply because they were accomplished flirts and flatterers, and charismatic presenters. Standardized tests reduce the role of those non-academic skills. No matter how much of a teacher's pet you are, you still need to know the answers.

 

[Arkady]

Sounds like you're hard on yourself.

Nah. Probably being too easy on myself. I probably actually sound like a brain-damaged first grader. It's astonishing how quickly the speaking skills fade. Within two years of moving away from Germany, I was already so bad I couldn't hold a proper conversation any more.

 

[PhilFish]

Homogeneous in what sense? I often hear that said, but Finland is a country with two official languages, based on having two distinct large ethnic groups (Finnish and Swedish), along with an official regional language (for the Sami people of the North). They're also religiously diverse, with a very significant minority of non-believers. And they're politically diverse, with ten parties in parliament, and much greater ideological diversity between major politicians on the left and right than you find in the US. I suppose they're much less economically diverse than the US, given the smaller gap between rich and poor and the low poverty rate. That would suggest that perhaps a greater focus on economic equity in the US could have us competing better with the likes of Finland, academically.

I would add the following, as concerns Finnish education...and others fo rthat matter..

their comprehensive approach to education includes:

full public funding
no tuition fees
full daycare
full early childhood education programs
free transporation
special education
and both compulsory, and secondary education funding.

here's more:
http://www.thedailyriff.com/article...-worlds-most-surprising-school-system-588.php

..not to mention very high tax revenues to pay for it...

 

[fairsheet]

I would add the following, as concerns Finnish education...and others fo rthat matter..

their comprehensive approach to education includes:

full public funding
no tuition fees
full daycare
full early childhood education programs
free transporation
special education
and both compulsory, and secondary education funding.

here's more:
http://www.thedailyriff.com/article...-worlds-most-surprising-school-system-588.php

..not to mention very high tax revenues to pay for it...

They also benefit from a rather remarkably homogeneous culture and population. We can debate whether or not their system shows more success than ours. But, a glass-half-full perspective tells us that considering the contrast in our populations, we might actually be doing surprisingly well.

P.S. I now see that this issue has already been brought up. The response seems to be that Finland isn't quite so homogeneous as some might allege. But, in contrast with most other modern nations - and ESPECIALLY ours - Finland's IS homogeneous.

 

[fairsheet]

The last standardized test I took, was the LSAT and before that, the SAT. Those were a loonng time ago. I would be interested in knowing how those tests compare with the standardized tests being given to kids today, and to which teachers are alleged to be "teaching to".

Those tests went at least as much to one's ability to think, as they did to what someone knew. Tests focusing merely on the number of factoids jammed into a kid's head, don't make sense to me. But...if a teacher "teaches to" a test that measures a student's cognition, critical thinking skills, and ability to solve generic problems....I'm fine with that.

And, I think it should be possible to design a race-neutral test that measures these factors.

 

[Arkady]

They also benefit from a rather remarkably homogeneous culture and population. We can debate whether or not their system shows more success than ours. But, a glass-half-full perspective tells us that considering the contrast in our populations, we might actually be doing surprisingly well.

P.S. I now see that this issue has already been brought up. The response seems to be that Finland isn't quite so homogeneous as some might allege. But, in contrast with most other modern nations - and ESPECIALLY ours - Finland's IS homogeneous.

In what sense do you call their population homogeneous? I assume you mean racially, since Finland is relatively diverse in a lot of other ways (as discussed above). But I'm not convinced racial homogeneousness matters much. West Virginia, for example, is racially homogeneous and also a train wreck, academically.

 

[fairsheet]

In what sense do you call their population homogeneous? I assume you mean racially, since Finland is relatively diverse in a lot of other ways (as discussed above). But I'm not convinced racial homogeneousness matters much. West Virginia, for example, is racially homogeneous and also a train wreck, academically.

Your efforts to diminish the homogeneity vs. heterogeneity factor when comparing the Finnish education system with our American one by parsing nuance and minutiae, falls on my deaf ears.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who proposes to contrast our system with their's, has no choice but to factor in this contrast. On the other hand, I do know that there are "for profit" Scandinavian education "companies" plying theirs wares where American charter school frameworks would allow and promise sufficient profit. I know a little about it because one of my sisters is the President of the NYC branch of one of these concerns.

So...if you're on retainer for one of these outfits, it makes sense that you would attempt to dismiss this contrast in "geneity". Those of us who aren't thus invested, don't have that luxury.