9 ms·

It’s still baffling to me how much emphasis we still place on test scores.

by tcj 7y ago

shantly 7y ago
No one can come up with anything better that provides feedback at least annually for all grades upper elementary and higher, and can be used to compare districts and schools across a state.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Only if you have national standards and you use weighted pass scores and not absolute ones ie top 5% is a A Otherwise you get grade inflation for example when I left school an Civil service ASO (assistant scientific officer) you needed 5 or 6 O levels (age 16 exams) now its a Degree entry.
- tcj 7y ago
  Why do you need to compare districts and schools across a state in the first place?
  - shantly 7y ago
    To determine relative school effectiveness. You could come up with some measure that's different for every school but it'd be a lot less useful for answering questions like "which schools are having trouble, so we can go try to find out what's going wrong there and fix it?"
    - tcj 7y ago
      I agree, especially in regards to knowing where to improve. But a bigger question is what do we consider effectiveness? Do higher scores on math tests mean a school is more effective than another? Because if we do we are saying that the "best" schools are the ones that provide the best test scores. Is that the measure we want for our schools, for our education and for learning in general? What do you think about that?
asdf21 7y ago
It's baffling to me whenever someone makes a comment like this. What else would you put emphasis on that can't be easily skewed by rampant subjectivity / favoritism?
- tcj 7y ago
  There are numerous options. First you could use more evaluative criteria. This is how most knowledge workers are evaluated in most modern startups. Unless you work on sales, you are probably measured by the quality of your thinking, your attitudes, projects, and initiatives. You don't deliver a piece of code and get a grade. Things like PISA were invented so that the people managing could, well, manage. So they could compare and get "concrete" numbers to get elected. And in terms of your question, what is wrong with subjectivity? We are dealing with human beings here, not computers. There will always be subjectivity. Our desire to boil everything down to data is a clear reflection of the computer age where everything needs to be a 0 or a 1. The medium is indeed the message. I think a broader question is what is the purpose of school? Is it an institution where we help people learn, or where we teach people how to memorize things? We are what we measure. If we are measuring how well students can memorize things and give "right" answers, this is the kind of society we will create. This is the reason schooling continues to be more and more irrelevant today.
  - asdf21 7y ago
    >Unless you work on sales, you are probably measured by the quality of your thinking, your attitudes, projects, and initiatives. You don't deliver a piece of code and get a grade. I'd be much happier if my code received a grade. My boss doesn't currently like me because I'm not a complete "yes man", while the other Project Managers here would 100% tell him the moon is made of cheese if that's what he wanted to hear. "Evaluative criteria" are ripe for abuse in a thousand different ways, including internalized bias and racism. There will always be subjectivity, but we can and should try to minimize it. I can't find the article now, but I remember reading a study where classical musicians were graded with the reviewers watching them, versus only hearing them play behind a curtain, and the scores were substantially different, exposing considerable bias. Here is something similar... https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/... Hence, standardized testing. It's practically a miracle, as far as I'm concerned -- a truly fair way to quantify many types of intellect / skills. >This is the reason schooling continues to be more and more irrelevant today. Schooling is more irrelevant today as people are realizing that putting a child into a school doesn't make them smarter, just like putting them onto a basketball court doesn't make them taller. It's just conditioning and babysitting (which most families need, to be fair.)

It’s still baffling to me how much emphasis we still place on test scores.

by tcj 7y ago

It’s still baffling to me how much emphasis we still place on test scores.

No one can come up with anything better that provides feedback at least annually for all grades upper elementary and higher, and can be used to compare districts and schools across a state.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
Only if you have national standards and you use weighted pass scores and not absolute ones ie top 5% is a A Otherwise you get grade inflation for example when I left school an Civil service ASO (assistant scientific officer) you needed 5 or 6 O levels (age 16 exams) now its a Degree entry.
tcj 7y ago
Why do you need to compare districts and schools across a state in the first place?
- shantly 7y ago
  To determine relative school effectiveness. You could come up with some measure that's different for every school but it'd be a lot less useful for answering questions like "which schools are having trouble, so we can go try to find out what's going wrong there and fix it?"
  - tcj 7y ago
    I agree, especially in regards to knowing where to improve. But a bigger question is what do we consider effectiveness? Do higher scores on math tests mean a school is more effective than another? Because if we do we are saying that the "best" schools are the ones that provide the best test scores. Is that the measure we want for our schools, for our education and for learning in general? What do you think about that?

asdf21 7y ago

It's baffling to me whenever someone makes a comment like this. What else would you put emphasis on that can't be easily skewed by rampant subjectivity / favoritism?

tcj 7y ago
There are numerous options. First you could use more evaluative criteria. This is how most knowledge workers are evaluated in most modern startups. Unless you work on sales, you are probably measured by the quality of your thinking, your attitudes, projects, and initiatives. You don't deliver a piece of code and get a grade. Things like PISA were invented so that the people managing could, well, manage. So they could compare and get "concrete" numbers to get elected. And in terms of your question, what is wrong with subjectivity? We are dealing with human beings here, not computers. There will always be subjectivity. Our desire to boil everything down to data is a clear reflection of the computer age where everything needs to be a 0 or a 1. The medium is indeed the message. I think a broader question is what is the purpose of school? Is it an institution where we help people learn, or where we teach people how to memorize things? We are what we measure. If we are measuring how well students can memorize things and give "right" answers, this is the kind of society we will create. This is the reason schooling continues to be more and more irrelevant today.
- asdf21 7y ago
  >Unless you work on sales, you are probably measured by the quality of your thinking, your attitudes, projects, and initiatives. You don't deliver a piece of code and get a grade. I'd be much happier if my code received a grade. My boss doesn't currently like me because I'm not a complete "yes man", while the other Project Managers here would 100% tell him the moon is made of cheese if that's what he wanted to hear. "Evaluative criteria" are ripe for abuse in a thousand different ways, including internalized bias and racism. There will always be subjectivity, but we can and should try to minimize it. I can't find the article now, but I remember reading a study where classical musicians were graded with the reviewers watching them, versus only hearing them play behind a curtain, and the scores were substantially different, exposing considerable bias. Here is something similar... https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/... Hence, standardized testing. It's practically a miracle, as far as I'm concerned -- a truly fair way to quantify many types of intellect / skills. >This is the reason schooling continues to be more and more irrelevant today. Schooling is more irrelevant today as people are realizing that putting a child into a school doesn't make them smarter, just like putting them onto a basketball court doesn't make them taller. It's just conditioning and babysitting (which most families need, to be fair.)