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> You have to ask, "is this stuff that a graduate of the system should be able to do?" Uhm, I don't feel like I do? Or at least insofar as I do, that set feels

> You have to ask, "is this stuff that a graduate of the system should be able to do?" Uhm, I don't feel like I do? Or at least insofar as I do, that set feels like it should be really small, because: Which graduate? There are many things that we'd like a graduate to do, but we don't need for every graduate to be able to do. I would quite like my CS grads to understand big O notation - I would not attempt to teach it to everyone. I would quite like my history grads to be able to perform independent research - I don't really care if my receptionist can. There are basic low level things that everyone should be able to do. Addition, multiplication, subtraction, division. But that set is quite small, and it beggars belief that one needs a hundred plus tests to figure out where someone is with respect to those things. Structured within that context, the idea that it's a good model to teach the tests; to have a list of things that you'd like graduates to be able to do and if they don't do that they're failing and the school's failing (and so on); seems supremely wasteful. If the students do some maths in the mean time and discover a passion for some particular element of it, great, but it's not useful to attempt to make them meet some idealised standard that doesn't reflect reality, rather than focusing on teaching people where their inclinations and skills lie.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Here are some real standardized tests. Which students don't need to be able to answer "Roberto paid $43.08 for 3 CDs. All 3 CDs were the same price. How much did each CD cost?" Which students don't need to be able to compute 3 x (3/4)? http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1... http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/042610book1w.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/04261... Since you seem to think the test covers too many topics, perhaps you can read it tell us concretely which ones should be removed?
- 6d0debc071 11y ago
  > Since you seem to think the test covers too many topics, perhaps you can read it tell us concretely which ones should be removed? I think you've somewhat missed the point, though I'm happy enough to play that game. My question would be which adults need to know those things? You ask me, "Which students don't need to be able to compute 3 x (3/4)?" And I would be inclined to answer anyone who doesn't want to go into some field that uses a lot of mathematics; accountancy, physics, computer science, biology, et cetera et cetera. Outside of the education system, for a lot of people, that knowledge has no value. And it's the same with the questions upon angles, the questions about area... people who aren't going to be working in particularly quantitative professions do not need to know these things. Your secretary does not need to know (taken from the sheets you posted) what an angle given by a line bisecting two parallel lines is. They don't need to know what 833,000 is written in scientific notation. They don't need to know what 2 over 3 to the power of four is, or which of the following: the square root of 144, the square root of 16, the square root of four, the square root of three - is an irrational number. They don't need to know what a 20% discount on a price of $37.50 is, it will be marked on what they want to buy. They do not need to know what has the same value as 5 to the power of 6 multiplied by 5 to the power of -2. Or what (jk)^-5(jk)^3 is. They do not need to know what the value of 4 to the square root of X is when X is 100. Or which graph shows that Y is equal to minus X squared. These things all have a use, but they don't have a use to everyone. They don't have a use to nearly everyone. Most people do not work in a profession where that sort of maths is useful. Your taxidriver does not need to be able to understand algebra, your secretary does not need to be able to understand geometry, your customer service representative does not need to be able to do calculus. And it is a waste of time, effort, money, and passion to try to teach them to do so if they are not interested. I would suggest, in the place of general standardised tests, a system more similar to the badges given out for scouting: pass fail assessment of a particular skill, voluntary participation, fine-grained certification. You have kids in a school, and if they want to go for their level 1 geometry badge, or whatever, then you help them do so. You retain the absolute basics that everyone has to have in order to get by in society, like addition, multiplication, division. And everything else you take out into a much finer-grained system that vouches for specific skills. That would allow both a better analysis of the sort of skills that are being promoted in particular areas by particular schools and it will allow children to pursue their aspirations rather than being shoehorned into a process that is not suitable for everybody and manages to say very little with respect to specific careers. People shouldn't end up shit-listed for life because they ended up studying a bunch of stuff they had no interest or passion for but which unfortunately, because of the way the system was set up, is the only way that their employer had to assess anything about their education.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    For the people who don't need to realize that a 20% discount on $37.50 is $30, why bother sending them to school past 6th grade at all? Now that I see your argument more fully, it seems less like an argument against testing and more like an argument against wasting resources on unneeded education. Do you believe the people who don't need the specific topics you mention actually do need education beyond grade 6? If so, why?
    - douche 11y ago
      What is this hypothetical 12-year-old going to do for the next six years until they are old enough to get the kind of minimum-wage job that accepts people without a diploma? Child-labor laws are still a thing... We're running into the other problem with public schooling: it's not so much about education as warehousing children while their parents work during the day, until like a tree, they grow the requisite number of rings that magically grants them status as an (more-or-less - see alcohol, car rentals, etc.) independent being. You can see this with the expansion of organized after-school sports and activities - school usually runs from 7:30-8:00AM to 2:30-3:00PM, except parents are still working until 5:00PM, so you've either got to trust your kids to get off the school bus and not burn the house down in two hours, send them to grandma, pay for ruinously expensive child-care, or hope little Johnny or Sally is into soccer/football/baseball/band/art, etc. On the first point, I would argue that understanding how money works is a pretty fundamental mathematical competency - percentages like that come up all the time with sales taxes, meal taxes, etc, and they are usually not built into the prices on the sticker/menu.
    - 6d0debc071 11y ago
      > For the people who don't need to realize that a 20% discount on $37.50 is $30, why bother sending them to school past 6th grade at all? Now that I see your argument more fully, it seems less like an argument against testing and more like an argument against wasting resources on unneeded education. Do you believe the people who don't need the specific topics you mention actually do need education beyond grade 6? If so, why? It's an argument against a specific form of testing. Frequent standardised tests; testing the same things across all the schools and all the students; using that as your measuring stick, shapes the fact that you're going to get a lot of unneeded, even harmful, education. And the more frequently you run those tests, the better your 'data' is (data which is not politically neutral, as some might think) the more pronounced the effect. Test scores are the incentive. There's two answers I can give to your question. One is the practical answer, as things stand at the moment. The other is the idealistic answer, as things could stand. For the practical answer, the most that I can say about someone who matches that pattern persisting in education, in the current system, after grade 6 is that they may be getting something else out of some of the other subjects that they study there. If you were a parent, and you couldn't afford to educate your child yourself, then it would probably still make sense to send your child to school beyond grade 6. If you don't do so, they won't have the qualifications to get by particularly well in life, and they may learn something useful in the process (though I wouldn't bet too much on it.) Besides, you still need some where to stick your children while you're at work. If nothing else, education is free child-care for poor people. That's not a good argument, nor is it an argument for the current system over the potential alternatives, mind. It's just saying that sometimes crap's the best thing on the menu. For the idealistic answer: What I'm advocating for is a different model of testing, in which the statement that someone would need an education 'beyond' grade 6 is not as meaningful. There are different skills, different areas of expertise that they could go into, but it would be very difficult to rank those skills: Is someone who we've certified can refit a central heating system more or less skilled than someone who we've certified can rewire a house? Someone with both is more skilled than someone who only has one, but at the same time are they a better electrician than someone who only has one? Is someone who understands the mathematics underlying musical theory more or less skilled than someone who understands the mathematics underlying computational complexity? If you can apply Bayes Theorem, are you more or less skilled than a frequentist statistician? It's a lot harder to rank people when you throw out the idea of 'this year,' or grades, and just have specific skills and people who can or can't do the job. Ideally I'd be able to answer your question by saying that children are given the chance to immerse themselves in a wide range of different subjects and projects - to follow those that appeal to them as far as they can go so that when they leave they have a wealth of ability that carries them through their lives. That if you're interested in mechanics, for example, you should be able to study mechanics all the time you're at school. Wouldn't we have some fantastic mechanics if they'd been learning on cars and lorries and boats and so on every week day for five or ten years under coaching appropriate to their skill level? Wouldn't we have some fantastic builders if they'd been learning building under that setup? Fantastic artists, fantastic musicians. Especially when we could focus on those who were interested. And who knows, they might - as they get further in that area - discover that maths is useful, and then they could go and get some maths badges when they've got a passion and a reason to drive their learning, (rather than it being something forced down their throats with no real promise of a relationship to their actual interests materialising.) But I can't - and so the former answer is what we're saddled with. Do you need it? Sure. Unless you've got reasonably well-off parents, you've got to go through the paces. Should you need it, in that form? No.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

Here are some real standardized tests. Which students don't need to be able to answer "Roberto paid $43.08 for 3 CDs. All 3 CDs were the same price. How much did each CD cost?" Which students don't need to be able to compute 3 x (3/4)? http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1... http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/042610book1w.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/04261... Since you seem to think the test covers too many topics, perhaps you can read it tell us concretely which ones should be removed?

6d0debc071 11y ago
> Since you seem to think the test covers too many topics, perhaps you can read it tell us concretely which ones should be removed? I think you've somewhat missed the point, though I'm happy enough to play that game. My question would be which adults need to know those things? You ask me, "Which students don't need to be able to compute 3 x (3/4)?" And I would be inclined to answer anyone who doesn't want to go into some field that uses a lot of mathematics; accountancy, physics, computer science, biology, et cetera et cetera. Outside of the education system, for a lot of people, that knowledge has no value. And it's the same with the questions upon angles, the questions about area... people who aren't going to be working in particularly quantitative professions do not need to know these things. Your secretary does not need to know (taken from the sheets you posted) what an angle given by a line bisecting two parallel lines is. They don't need to know what 833,000 is written in scientific notation. They don't need to know what 2 over 3 to the power of four is, or which of the following: the square root of 144, the square root of 16, the square root of four, the square root of three - is an irrational number. They don't need to know what a 20% discount on a price of $37.50 is, it will be marked on what they want to buy. They do not need to know what has the same value as 5 to the power of 6 multiplied by 5 to the power of -2. Or what (jk)^-5(jk)^3 is. They do not need to know what the value of 4 to the square root of X is when X is 100. Or which graph shows that Y is equal to minus X squared. These things all have a use, but they don't have a use to everyone. They don't have a use to nearly everyone. Most people do not work in a profession where that sort of maths is useful. Your taxidriver does not need to be able to understand algebra, your secretary does not need to be able to understand geometry, your customer service representative does not need to be able to do calculus. And it is a waste of time, effort, money, and passion to try to teach them to do so if they are not interested. I would suggest, in the place of general standardised tests, a system more similar to the badges given out for scouting: pass fail assessment of a particular skill, voluntary participation, fine-grained certification. You have kids in a school, and if they want to go for their level 1 geometry badge, or whatever, then you help them do so. You retain the absolute basics that everyone has to have in order to get by in society, like addition, multiplication, division. And everything else you take out into a much finer-grained system that vouches for specific skills. That would allow both a better analysis of the sort of skills that are being promoted in particular areas by particular schools and it will allow children to pursue their aspirations rather than being shoehorned into a process that is not suitable for everybody and manages to say very little with respect to specific careers. People shouldn't end up shit-listed for life because they ended up studying a bunch of stuff they had no interest or passion for but which unfortunately, because of the way the system was set up, is the only way that their employer had to assess anything about their education.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  For the people who don't need to realize that a 20% discount on $37.50 is $30, why bother sending them to school past 6th grade at all? Now that I see your argument more fully, it seems less like an argument against testing and more like an argument against wasting resources on unneeded education. Do you believe the people who don't need the specific topics you mention actually do need education beyond grade 6? If so, why?
  - douche 11y ago
    What is this hypothetical 12-year-old going to do for the next six years until they are old enough to get the kind of minimum-wage job that accepts people without a diploma? Child-labor laws are still a thing... We're running into the other problem with public schooling: it's not so much about education as warehousing children while their parents work during the day, until like a tree, they grow the requisite number of rings that magically grants them status as an (more-or-less - see alcohol, car rentals, etc.) independent being. You can see this with the expansion of organized after-school sports and activities - school usually runs from 7:30-8:00AM to 2:30-3:00PM, except parents are still working until 5:00PM, so you've either got to trust your kids to get off the school bus and not burn the house down in two hours, send them to grandma, pay for ruinously expensive child-care, or hope little Johnny or Sally is into soccer/football/baseball/band/art, etc. On the first point, I would argue that understanding how money works is a pretty fundamental mathematical competency - percentages like that come up all the time with sales taxes, meal taxes, etc, and they are usually not built into the prices on the sticker/menu.
  - 6d0debc071 11y ago
    > For the people who don't need to realize that a 20% discount on $37.50 is $30, why bother sending them to school past 6th grade at all? Now that I see your argument more fully, it seems less like an argument against testing and more like an argument against wasting resources on unneeded education. Do you believe the people who don't need the specific topics you mention actually do need education beyond grade 6? If so, why? It's an argument against a specific form of testing. Frequent standardised tests; testing the same things across all the schools and all the students; using that as your measuring stick, shapes the fact that you're going to get a lot of unneeded, even harmful, education. And the more frequently you run those tests, the better your 'data' is (data which is not politically neutral, as some might think) the more pronounced the effect. Test scores are the incentive. There's two answers I can give to your question. One is the practical answer, as things stand at the moment. The other is the idealistic answer, as things could stand. For the practical answer, the most that I can say about someone who matches that pattern persisting in education, in the current system, after grade 6 is that they may be getting something else out of some of the other subjects that they study there. If you were a parent, and you couldn't afford to educate your child yourself, then it would probably still make sense to send your child to school beyond grade 6. If you don't do so, they won't have the qualifications to get by particularly well in life, and they may learn something useful in the process (though I wouldn't bet too much on it.) Besides, you still need some where to stick your children while you're at work. If nothing else, education is free child-care for poor people. That's not a good argument, nor is it an argument for the current system over the potential alternatives, mind. It's just saying that sometimes crap's the best thing on the menu. For the idealistic answer: What I'm advocating for is a different model of testing, in which the statement that someone would need an education 'beyond' grade 6 is not as meaningful. There are different skills, different areas of expertise that they could go into, but it would be very difficult to rank those skills: Is someone who we've certified can refit a central heating system more or less skilled than someone who we've certified can rewire a house? Someone with both is more skilled than someone who only has one, but at the same time are they a better electrician than someone who only has one? Is someone who understands the mathematics underlying musical theory more or less skilled than someone who understands the mathematics underlying computational complexity? If you can apply Bayes Theorem, are you more or less skilled than a frequentist statistician? It's a lot harder to rank people when you throw out the idea of 'this year,' or grades, and just have specific skills and people who can or can't do the job. Ideally I'd be able to answer your question by saying that children are given the chance to immerse themselves in a wide range of different subjects and projects - to follow those that appeal to them as far as they can go so that when they leave they have a wealth of ability that carries them through their lives. That if you're interested in mechanics, for example, you should be able to study mechanics all the time you're at school. Wouldn't we have some fantastic mechanics if they'd been learning on cars and lorries and boats and so on every week day for five or ten years under coaching appropriate to their skill level? Wouldn't we have some fantastic builders if they'd been learning building under that setup? Fantastic artists, fantastic musicians. Especially when we could focus on those who were interested. And who knows, they might - as they get further in that area - discover that maths is useful, and then they could go and get some maths badges when they've got a passion and a reason to drive their learning, (rather than it being something forced down their throats with no real promise of a relationship to their actual interests materialising.) But I can't - and so the former answer is what we're saddled with. Do you need it? Sure. Unless you've got reasonably well-off parents, you've got to go through the paces. Should you need it, in that form? No.