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> Maybe a way to do this would be to separate teaching from testing. Have testing be established by some external body, and make it so both the university and t

> Maybe a way to do this would be to separate teaching from testing. Have testing be established by some external body, and make it so both the university and the student receive a payout when the student succeeds on the test. This is basically what standardized testing is all about, and it's a significant contributor to the inadequacy of education in the United States. We haven't figured out a scalable way to measure classroom outcomes.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
How does standardized testing contribute to the inadequacy of education? If anything, it shows which students need help, as opposed to grade inflation and throwing out A grades to everyone that hands in a homework assignment on time. Local parents can influence grades, but they can’t get past standardized testing (which is why colleges use SAT/ACT/AP grades to filter rather than GPA). Perhaps funding as a result of standardized testing is a problem and distracts from teaching. But the actual problem is children who grow up in unsupportive environments with lack of parental guidance. That socioeconomic class divide exposed by standardized testing isn’t going to be fixed by getting rid of standardized testing.
- sethammons 8y ago
  Standardized testing leads to teaching to the test, and the tests need to be easily gradable, so we teach kids how to take tests that represents content in a mannor that is a mile wide but an inch deep. Multiple choice is a crap way to measure most understanding. This doesn't take away your other point: unsupportive environments. Socio-economically disadvantaged kids are truly disadvantaged.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Your argument proves that PhD qualifying exams are crap because it’s a generalised argument against testing, not a specific one against multiple choice tests. It’s perfectly possible to write good tests, ones with good reliability and validity. If the test is good teaching to the test is not a problem.
  - distances 8y ago
    > Standardized testing leads to teaching to the test, and the tests need to be easily gradable, so we teach kids how to take tests that represents content in a mannor that is a mile wide but an inch deep. Not true, the test could be arranged in other ways depending on the goals. I've taken one standardized suite of test, after 12 years of schooling, and the questions were quite deep enough. The limited number of questions you can cram into six hours per subject meant that the math test could contain only one task in statistics, one in geometry, and so on; with luck you could do well while lacking in some areas. That would be a gamble though.
    - sethammons 8y ago
      As a former math teacher in a disadvantaged area, I'm going to have to stick to my original statement. It could be different in other regions of the world, but, in the US, because funding is based on test scores, and teachers are required to teach the test concepts, whether students are ready for them or not. Students have to cover so much material in a given time period. For many, the time to truly "get" the material is not there. They can memorize something, test on it, move on. The fact that some students are capable of getting through this and learn or retain information does not mean it is a good method of doing things. As a practical example why multiple choice can be unfair: a student could understand that solving for the roots of a parabolic curve (quadratic equation) could model the landing point of a ballistic projectile. They could understand the difference of squares method to solving quadratics, factoring, solving linear equations, etc. But a simple arithmetic mess up (they add instead of subtracting on one step even though they wrote a subtraction sign) leads to the wrong answer. Because it is a multiple choice test and because test makers have seen this same error before, the wrong answer the student found is one of the multiple choice solutions. Boom. Zero credit on that question. This failed to measure the student's understanding. How do you get around that? More questions with more nuances. Can you get signal on student understanding from multiple choice tests? Sure. Is it good? Depends on the test and it is hard to write good tests.
      - goolulusaurs 8y ago
        I do think it is worth drawing a distinction between college and K-12 though. In college students are there by their own choice, and colleges choose who they admit, and if students are paid when they succeed on tests they have a strong and immediate incentive that doesn't exist for them in K-12. There is no necessary reason that tests have to be on a strict time schedule. Imagine instead that testing is offered continuously throughout the year, and a small fee is collected from both the school and the student for taking the test, which is refunded along with the payout if the student succeeds. Then there would be a reason to avoid taking testing before the student has a good handle on the material. I think that testing serves different functions depending on the context, the binary signal of whether someone has a degree or not from some random university doesn't really measure deep understanding either. It makes sense for a teacher to measure the fined-grained understanding of their students it order to figure out what they most need help with, but maybe it is less important for determining when their level of skill and knowledge is above the threshold where they should be given a degree or credential.

lotsofpulp 8y ago

How does standardized testing contribute to the inadequacy of education? If anything, it shows which students need help, as opposed to grade inflation and throwing out A grades to everyone that hands in a homework assignment on time. Local parents can influence grades, but they can’t get past standardized testing (which is why colleges use SAT/ACT/AP grades to filter rather than GPA). Perhaps funding as a result of standardized testing is a problem and distracts from teaching. But the actual problem is children who grow up in unsupportive environments with lack of parental guidance. That socioeconomic class divide exposed by standardized testing isn’t going to be fixed by getting rid of standardized testing.

sethammons 8y ago
Standardized testing leads to teaching to the test, and the tests need to be easily gradable, so we teach kids how to take tests that represents content in a mannor that is a mile wide but an inch deep. Multiple choice is a crap way to measure most understanding. This doesn't take away your other point: unsupportive environments. Socio-economically disadvantaged kids are truly disadvantaged.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Your argument proves that PhD qualifying exams are crap because it’s a generalised argument against testing, not a specific one against multiple choice tests. It’s perfectly possible to write good tests, ones with good reliability and validity. If the test is good teaching to the test is not a problem.
- distances 8y ago
  > Standardized testing leads to teaching to the test, and the tests need to be easily gradable, so we teach kids how to take tests that represents content in a mannor that is a mile wide but an inch deep. Not true, the test could be arranged in other ways depending on the goals. I've taken one standardized suite of test, after 12 years of schooling, and the questions were quite deep enough. The limited number of questions you can cram into six hours per subject meant that the math test could contain only one task in statistics, one in geometry, and so on; with luck you could do well while lacking in some areas. That would be a gamble though.
  - sethammons 8y ago
    As a former math teacher in a disadvantaged area, I'm going to have to stick to my original statement. It could be different in other regions of the world, but, in the US, because funding is based on test scores, and teachers are required to teach the test concepts, whether students are ready for them or not. Students have to cover so much material in a given time period. For many, the time to truly "get" the material is not there. They can memorize something, test on it, move on. The fact that some students are capable of getting through this and learn or retain information does not mean it is a good method of doing things. As a practical example why multiple choice can be unfair: a student could understand that solving for the roots of a parabolic curve (quadratic equation) could model the landing point of a ballistic projectile. They could understand the difference of squares method to solving quadratics, factoring, solving linear equations, etc. But a simple arithmetic mess up (they add instead of subtracting on one step even though they wrote a subtraction sign) leads to the wrong answer. Because it is a multiple choice test and because test makers have seen this same error before, the wrong answer the student found is one of the multiple choice solutions. Boom. Zero credit on that question. This failed to measure the student's understanding. How do you get around that? More questions with more nuances. Can you get signal on student understanding from multiple choice tests? Sure. Is it good? Depends on the test and it is hard to write good tests.
    - goolulusaurs 8y ago
      I do think it is worth drawing a distinction between college and K-12 though. In college students are there by their own choice, and colleges choose who they admit, and if students are paid when they succeed on tests they have a strong and immediate incentive that doesn't exist for them in K-12. There is no necessary reason that tests have to be on a strict time schedule. Imagine instead that testing is offered continuously throughout the year, and a small fee is collected from both the school and the student for taking the test, which is refunded along with the payout if the student succeeds. Then there would be a reason to avoid taking testing before the student has a good handle on the material. I think that testing serves different functions depending on the context, the binary signal of whether someone has a degree or not from some random university doesn't really measure deep understanding either. It makes sense for a teacher to measure the fined-grained understanding of their students it order to figure out what they most need help with, but maybe it is less important for determining when their level of skill and knowledge is above the threshold where they should be given a degree or credential.