4 ms·

In my eyes, standardized tests are bad because they will always shine a bright light on differences between groups. We don't like to admit it these days, but h

In my eyes, standardized tests are bad because they will always shine a bright light on differences between groups. We don't like to admit it these days, but humans are not identical. We can accept some basic differences, such as skin tone. We get extremely uncomfortable extending that notion to cognitive skills. To be clear, I'm not singling out any group -- I'm not linking skin tone to cognitive skill in any way. So, we bring in standardized tests to level the playing field. At first, those tests are deeply flawed and filled with bias, making them especially harmful. Then, we iterate, and remove those testing flaws. And we trick ourselves into thinking that will solve the problem. But, suppose we arrive at the perfectly fair test. Suppose the test is highly predictive of, say, success at a 4 year college. Now, what do you do if that test habitually ranks some group lower than other groups? To me, it feels like we are right back at square one. Personally, I would prefer to focus our energy on helping each other out. If one person, or group, is falling behind, you find a way to help, and also to integrate each group into the whole. I know I'm oversimplifying -- I just think standardized testing is a fruitless exercise.

gizmo686 9y ago
> If one person, or group, is falling behind, you find a way to help. And how do you know if a person or group is falling behind? To do this, you need some type of metric; and standardized testing is the best metric we have at scale.
- dogruck 9y ago
  Ok, so you have your metric. What next? They plug all of your stats into the function, and it says, "you will never be a good NBA player." With the NBA, we're comfortable saying "meh, not too many of those anyway -- moving on to high stakes poker -- never liked playing basketball anyway." But when the metric is of something much more broad, such as "success at a 4 year college" we're not so comfortable doing that. I just don't see what problem the standardized test actually solves.
  - gizmo686 9y ago
    We want a well educated population. To do this, we have set up an educational system. However, education is a difficult problem, and it is not clear what works and what does not. What we need is some way of measuring how well things work. That is the problem that standardized testing is meant to solve. There are some tests that are intended to assist in accademic discrimination (eg. we only want good students here, so you need a good SAT score to get in), but that is not the usage we are talking about when we say California's are flatlining. Google A/B tests moving a pixel on their home page. Compiler writers performance test optimization passes. Educators want objective feedback too.
    - dogruck 9y ago
      The SAT is explicitly designed to predict success at college. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT
      - gizmo686 9y ago
        We are not talking about the SAT. This article is talking about the CAASPP, which is intended to provide feedback and ratings for the schools, not the students.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        Does CAASPP differ in any salient way from SAT? If someone from another nation took each of them without seeing the cover sheet, could she say that the tests were different in any important way?
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        > If someone from another nation took each of them without seeing the cover sheet, could she say that the tests were different in any important way? SAT is a paper-based fixed set of questions, CAASPP is an adaptive computer-based exam. So, yes, quite.
tristor 9y ago
So, eliminate competition because it's unfair? That does not to me seem like a recipe for success on a global scale. If anything, the thing which has made the culture in the US uniquely attractive to so many people from all over the world is the fact that we revel in competition in a way most other societies do not. We love to compete, and are unabashed about keeping score. Let's assume for a moment that we focus exclusively on helping everyone get ahead and eliminate standardized testing. What happens when people get out in the real world and get the shock they never had in school that they don't quite measure up? To prevent that would require a complete restructuring of society, it'd look wildly different. Among other things it wouldn't be possible with a capitalist economy by which the "best" products in the market are rewarded financially and competition is the basis of business. Is that really the world you want to live in?
- NegatioN 9y ago
  Even if they get a greater shock when entering "the real world", they would still be better prepared for it if they were more competent coming out of school. It's a red herring to say that we would need to further restructure society to get any benefit from helping youth better overcome the challenges of school. I'd say that probably depends on what you expect from them. But I don't think it's unfair to say that probably more students are left behind because of teaching/learning disabilities than there are people who simply will never be able to cope with the subjects at hand (because of cognitive limitations).

gizmo686 9y ago

> If one person, or group, is falling behind, you find a way to help. And how do you know if a person or group is falling behind? To do this, you need some type of metric; and standardized testing is the best metric we have at scale.

dogruck 9y ago
Ok, so you have your metric. What next? They plug all of your stats into the function, and it says, "you will never be a good NBA player." With the NBA, we're comfortable saying "meh, not too many of those anyway -- moving on to high stakes poker -- never liked playing basketball anyway." But when the metric is of something much more broad, such as "success at a 4 year college" we're not so comfortable doing that. I just don't see what problem the standardized test actually solves.
- gizmo686 9y ago
  We want a well educated population. To do this, we have set up an educational system. However, education is a difficult problem, and it is not clear what works and what does not. What we need is some way of measuring how well things work. That is the problem that standardized testing is meant to solve. There are some tests that are intended to assist in accademic discrimination (eg. we only want good students here, so you need a good SAT score to get in), but that is not the usage we are talking about when we say California's are flatlining. Google A/B tests moving a pixel on their home page. Compiler writers performance test optimization passes. Educators want objective feedback too.
  - dogruck 9y ago
    The SAT is explicitly designed to predict success at college. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT
    - gizmo686 9y ago
      We are not talking about the SAT. This article is talking about the CAASPP, which is intended to provide feedback and ratings for the schools, not the students.
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        Does CAASPP differ in any salient way from SAT? If someone from another nation took each of them without seeing the cover sheet, could she say that the tests were different in any important way?
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        > If someone from another nation took each of them without seeing the cover sheet, could she say that the tests were different in any important way? SAT is a paper-based fixed set of questions, CAASPP is an adaptive computer-based exam. So, yes, quite.

tristor 9y ago

So, eliminate competition because it's unfair? That does not to me seem like a recipe for success on a global scale. If anything, the thing which has made the culture in the US uniquely attractive to so many people from all over the world is the fact that we revel in competition in a way most other societies do not. We love to compete, and are unabashed about keeping score. Let's assume for a moment that we focus exclusively on helping everyone get ahead and eliminate standardized testing. What happens when people get out in the real world and get the shock they never had in school that they don't quite measure up? To prevent that would require a complete restructuring of society, it'd look wildly different. Among other things it wouldn't be possible with a capitalist economy by which the "best" products in the market are rewarded financially and competition is the basis of business. Is that really the world you want to live in?

NegatioN 9y ago
Even if they get a greater shock when entering "the real world", they would still be better prepared for it if they were more competent coming out of school. It's a red herring to say that we would need to further restructure society to get any benefit from helping youth better overcome the challenges of school. I'd say that probably depends on what you expect from them. But I don't think it's unfair to say that probably more students are left behind because of teaching/learning disabilities than there are people who simply will never be able to cope with the subjects at hand (because of cognitive limitations).