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> Standardized testing is the benchmark for efficient signaling. I suppose it is indeed the benchmark, but standardized testing has mixed results. Aircraft pi

by gumby 3y ago

> Standardized testing is the benchmark for efficient signaling. I suppose it is indeed the benchmark, but standardized testing has mixed results. Aircraft pilot testing is, I believe, somewhat standardized and does demonstrate that at least when you it you met some baseline level of safety. The bar exam shows you have some baseline level of competency (as a non-lawyer who never read any law I am sure I would not pass) but I doubt it’s especially predictive as to how good a lawyer you will be. I took the SAT and got into a bunch of schools, but I was struck by how it didn’t seem to reflect much of anything we learned in school, except some of the math (we were not given any sat prep nor encouraged to get any). Note: I know MIT says SAT is somewhat predictive as to whether you will graduate, so…? I wonder about these full-cohort tests that control school admissions, such as in China, Korea, Japan, or France. Are the “winners” actually better in some useful way or is it simply a sorting hat that bins students into institutions with good/mediocre/bad networks?

hibikir 3y ago
I can tell you about the test in Spain: Ultimately it's actually testing what you learned in school, vs the SAT's IQ + Vocab proxy. Since it asks for so much, in practice it's testing for the quality of your school too, as if your classmates in high school were bad enough, or your teacher cared little about covering the material, you might not have even covered some of the questions. So in practice, some schools averaged extremely good results in some subjects even for the worst students, while in others the very best always scored badly: Imagine in the foreign language test, one school might have a teacher that could actually communicate well in English, while others didn't. Another fun part is that it limits how much a motivated high school can do regarding unfair grading: In my year, the average grades in high school and the grades in the University test, while relatively correlated, had some very big outliers. Do note that in Spain, more than a matter of which university you'll go to, it's also a matter of which major you'll be allowed to study. In general, high paying, low unemployment majors are basically unachievable by someone that tested badly, or had bad high school grades. So it's not a matter if you are going to the right university, but whether you can study anything you care about at all. I had friends that liked computer science, but were C students, so they had no prayer of studying CS. And also note that, even after you get into college, chances of flunking out are very high. About 15% of students are expelled every year from that CS program, to which you have to add the ones that drop out voluntarily. So more than sorting people into colleges, there's a whole lot of sorting into just getting a useful degree in a timely fashion.
dmoy 3y ago
> as in China, Korea, Japan, or France. Are the “winners” actually better in some useful way or is it simply a sorting hat that bins students into institutions with good/mediocre/bad networks? I can't speak to the latter three, but for China it's in large part whether you tested into a good middle school (at age 10 or whatever), and then tested into a good high school, and then spent a sufficient amount of time (read: 20hrs/day) cramming in the ~year before the exam supported by your good high school. Or have rich parents to pay your way into the good high school, or pay for top end tutoring / cram school if that route of corruption isn't available. Or I guess live in an area where the gap between <City Name> #1 High School and the next one down isn't as stark
- gumby 3y ago
  > I can't speak to the latter three, but for China it's in large part whether you tested into a good middle school (at age 10 or whatever), and then tested into a good high school, and then spent a sufficient amount of time (read: 20hrs/day) cramming in the ~year before the exam supported by your good high school. > Or have rich parents So sounds like a useful test then: actual knowledge or skill is at best second order, but ability to fit into the upper tier networks has been demonstrated.

by gumby 3y ago

hibikir 3y ago

I can tell you about the test in Spain: Ultimately it's actually testing what you learned in school, vs the SAT's IQ + Vocab proxy. Since it asks for so much, in practice it's testing for the quality of your school too, as if your classmates in high school were bad enough, or your teacher cared little about covering the material, you might not have even covered some of the questions. So in practice, some schools averaged extremely good results in some subjects even for the worst students, while in others the very best always scored badly: Imagine in the foreign language test, one school might have a teacher that could actually communicate well in English, while others didn't. Another fun part is that it limits how much a motivated high school can do regarding unfair grading: In my year, the average grades in high school and the grades in the University test, while relatively correlated, had some very big outliers. Do note that in Spain, more than a matter of which university you'll go to, it's also a matter of which major you'll be allowed to study. In general, high paying, low unemployment majors are basically unachievable by someone that tested badly, or had bad high school grades. So it's not a matter if you are going to the right university, but whether you can study anything you care about at all. I had friends that liked computer science, but were C students, so they had no prayer of studying CS. And also note that, even after you get into college, chances of flunking out are very high. About 15% of students are expelled every year from that CS program, to which you have to add the ones that drop out voluntarily. So more than sorting people into colleges, there's a whole lot of sorting into just getting a useful degree in a timely fashion.

dmoy 3y ago

> as in China, Korea, Japan, or France. Are the “winners” actually better in some useful way or is it simply a sorting hat that bins students into institutions with good/mediocre/bad networks? I can't speak to the latter three, but for China it's in large part whether you tested into a good middle school (at age 10 or whatever), and then tested into a good high school, and then spent a sufficient amount of time (read: 20hrs/day) cramming in the ~year before the exam supported by your good high school. Or have rich parents to pay your way into the good high school, or pay for top end tutoring / cram school if that route of corruption isn't available. Or I guess live in an area where the gap between <City Name> #1 High School and the next one down isn't as stark

gumby 3y ago
> I can't speak to the latter three, but for China it's in large part whether you tested into a good middle school (at age 10 or whatever), and then tested into a good high school, and then spent a sufficient amount of time (read: 20hrs/day) cramming in the ~year before the exam supported by your good high school. > Or have rich parents So sounds like a useful test then: actual knowledge or skill is at best second order, but ability to fit into the upper tier networks has been demonstrated.