Taking the A2K pluse on high stakes, standardized testing in schools

@maxdancona,

Max, the reason I was over here reading old threads (which led to me asking this question) was that I read something that reminded me of your thoughts on this:

Quote:

Wood insists that if he’s smart, he didn’t start out that way. Growing up in Southern California, he says, “I didn’t do well in any classes.” He often failed or received the lowest score on the first exam given in a particular course and improved his marks through repetition and intense effort. The strategy worked. He skipped a couple of grades and enrolled at UCLA at 16, where he tested into an honors-level calculus class. The worst score on the first exam—once again—was his. “I’d gotten into the class on the basis of aptitude, not knowledge, which is a ruinous sort of thing,” he says. “It’s like being told I understand the theory of swimming, and so here I am tossed into a high-speed river.”

I think you'd really enjoy the whole article: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-americas-top-inventor-lowell-wood/

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

That is a fair question. It is probably a conversation we should have on a national level instead of at local school boards across the nation. I think that was some of the common core motivation, to set a national standard so that a high school degree meant the same everywhere in the US.

I see another part of education as exposing students to different fields. Some small subset of students will find the roots of a quadratic polynomial and see beauty in the solution that will guide them to fields that they might not otherwise consider. Some will quickly forget it but be in some situation where they know that a problem can be solved even if they don't remember how to do it. The same with teaching history, geography, etc. Being a great creative problem solver isn't very useful if you suffer from a lack of background to feed the problem solving engine. The dean of engineering was an instructor of mine in college. His favorite saying was "in your career, you will only use 10% of what we are teaching you here. Our problem is we don't know which 10%."

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@engineer,

Testing is not a problem, over testing and testing at too young an age is a problem.

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@boomerang,

Thank you Boomerang... that is a fun article. I think I would like that guy.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

"hard-working", high gpa students were unable to do this. They wanted to study a book and have a set of solutions that they could just plug in new numbers into. They were very good at memorizing solutions from a book... But, I wanted them to be able to use the tools they had to develop their own methods to attack new problems.

This is the opposite of my daughter - why she does well on papers and projects - it requires actual learning and thoughts where as test taking is all memorizing and trying to spit out whatever they ask - why I do not like standarized testing.

Her projects and papers are usually much higher than her actual test grades with multiple choice and true false being her worst. That is why she needs to learn how to take tests and reduce test stress. She meets with someone weekly now just to work on this.

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@maxdancona,

We do not have the option to opt out - every student in the state needs to pass mcas in order to graduate.

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@boomerang,

boomerang - there are books out there that teach you how to get good grades - from how to study for different types of tests, to how to read your teachers and how they will grade you.

The pressure for good test scores - like mcas, sats and act and to get high grades is so strong and competitive that many students are learning how to get good test scores and good grades over the learning.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

and not surprisingly this lack in my skill set has never hurt me

It helps an awful lot in Trivia Crack

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@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

Quote:
and not surprisingly this lack in my skill set has never hurt me

It helps an awful lot in Trivia Crack

I prefer powdered Trivia.

1 Reply

@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

We do not have the option to opt out - every student in the state needs to pass mcas in order to graduate.

My daughter is still in elementary school, you can opt out of the MCAS there and there are some families I know who do just that. I think you are correct about high school. (I am assuming the M in your MCAS is for Massachusetts, same as ours).

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It was 2002 or 2003 when I had a heart to heart with one of my kids teachers about how much time was wasted testing rather than teaching. I got told that her and me could not do anything about it so there was no point in thinking or talking about it.

It got worse from there.

How much time have we got invested in this bad idea. something like 20 years? Now they decide that it was a bad idea? They could not test it first? The could not test after the roll out to find out if it was a good idea? NOW they figure this out?

Par for the course with the American Elites.

They suck.

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@Linkat,

Quote:

This is the opposite of my daughter - why she does well on papers and projects - it requires actual learning and thoughts where as test taking is all memorizing and trying to spit out whatever they ask - why I do not like standarized testing.

I dont like it because it makes the test scores the currency of the place, and there is a damn sight more involved in growing a quality adult than test scores.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Testing is not a problem, over testing and testing at too young an age is a problem.

Over testing per year and spending doing lots of testing too many years of the 13 or more school years, and it is not just the young testing that is a poor use of time.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

A few years back I listened to a valedictorian speech where the girl talked about how she wasn't really that smart, certainly not smarter than the kids not standing up their speaking, but that she had simply learned how to "do" school. I think we're seeing more of this "do school" mentality - reciting the answers needed to pass a test. I find that worrisome.

Exactly. Then, after the test, the information isn't retained. They didn't learn the subject matter, they learned how to manipulate.

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@hawkeye10,

It is hard to keep all of the education bad idea reform movements in order but I think the bad idea before the barrage of standardized test bad idea was the breaking up of big schools into several schools and building only small schools bad idea. THis was one of the worst of the lot of the bad ideas, and again we saw it done with almost no testing before, and it took way to long after to figure out that it was a bad idea because no one wanted to know enough that it worked to see if it worked.

The slated bad idea after the barrage of testing bad idea is the common core idea. But now that the conservatives dont like it at the jump I figure that we dont need to wait too many years to see if it works, which would be a nice improvement from the norm. Results to date are not promising.

And so it goes.....

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@hawkeye10,

Yes Hawkeye, that's what over testing means.

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@Linkat,

Linkat wrote:

This is the opposite of my daughter - why she does well on papers and projects

That sounds about right, generally girls make effective use of time and are good collaborators. Give a mixed class three weeks to produce something, and, with a few exceptions, the girls will use the three weeks while the boys arse about then pull an all nighter.

Any system that relies too heavily on exams penalises girls, and one that relies on assessed work puts boys at a disadvantage, both are needed.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Yes Hawkeye, that's what over testing means.

Still unknown is whether you understand that there is too much testing in the later years as well.

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@hawkeye10,

Only to you. I said over testing and testing at too young an age. It was clear to anyone with even the most basic comprehension that I was talking about two separate things.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Only to you. I said over testing and testing at too young an age. It was clear to anyone with even the most basic comprehension that I was talking about two separate things.

I got what you said. I was attempting to educate you on the subject. Me having three kids that have been through the system to your zero makes me the subject matter expert.

1 Reply

Taking the A2K pluse on high stakes, standardized testing in schools

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