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'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her 8th Grade Students

464 points by saulrh 15y ago

rubidium 15y ago
And keep pushing. Keep writing these letters. Keep not accepting things "because that's just the way it is". Keep getting the news out. Even if it takes 10 or 30 years. It's worth it to provide real educations for the current youth of society. It means a future worth living in.
tkahn6 15y ago
Also see, a study done by an MIT professor about SAT essay scores and essay length. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&position= http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4634566 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4634566 Money quote: "It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the longer the essay, the higher the score."
- GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
  What better way to qualify people for academia?
tokenadult 15y ago
Or, in the alternative, learn the rubric, take the silly test according to that rubric (it looks to me as if any student who is reasonably bright and really well taught could rapidly learn to produce answers that fit that rubric), and then write a really well crafted proposal, based on research, for how to make the test better. An eighth grade class that produced a lot of students capable of doing that would be very impressive and would get a lot of attention.
jes5199 15y ago
Our standardized tests lead classes to a sort of "malicious compliance" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance - the tests are So Important to the schools that everything becomes a cram session, in lieu of actual teaching and exploring ideas. It doesn't have to be that way. There are counterexamples: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame... [Edit: (Technically it's just Goodhart's Law when there's no malicious intent. Hard to tell the difference sometimes, though. http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/ ) ]
- waterlesscloud 15y ago
  You see a lot of complaints about standardized tests, but the simple fact of the matter is that standardized tests are not going away. People want a way to evaluate student performance in a way that works across many schools, districts, and states. By definition, that's going to be via standardized testing. Complaining about them will not help. Make better tests. Teach better around the tests. Those options are fine. But implying that the very idea of standardized testing is constricting is a waste of time. They aren't going anywhere.
  - jes5199 15y ago
    It doesn't have to be a black and white question - I think there would be benefits to having fewer standardized tests, and to de-emphasize them when making policy (especially funding decisions) in favor of other metrics.
    - chives 15y ago
      I love standardized tests, they are easy. Really easy. Anyone who wants to ace them, can and will, many without studying. Are they helpful? Who knows, most likely not at all.
      - eropple 15y ago
        > Anyone who wants to ace them, can and will This is an amazingly provincial comment and it does not reflect well upon you. Rather than assuming malice in your comment, however, I would gently suggest that it would be rather difficult for someone passed from grade to grade without basic functional literacy to ace such a test. Or, for a sneakier, harder to quantify example, there are "standardized" tests in circulation (and I was exposed to some of them in middle and high school) where certain cultural information was implicitly demanded. Probably not a problem for middle-class suburban kids, but unlikely to be appropriate for underprivileged very-rural kids (of which the testing area had many). A narrow worldview isn't something to be ashamed of, but it is something to recognize and compensate for when making statements like yours.
anigbrowl 15y ago
Well, don't link to or quote from the material under discussion, or gives examples of any questions or the like - that might leave your readers informed rather than merely exercised.
- vacri 15y ago
  ... you mean the intended audience that has already taken the test? Surely they're already aware of not just example questions, but the specific ones asked?
deleted 15y ago
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narrator 15y ago
It seems in America we solve our problems in one of two ways: A. Spending more money indiscriminately. Money always makes everything better. Just look at health care! B: Getting the federal government to take over and centralize everything. Creative ideas are almost always ignored unless they are a means of executing strategy A or B.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  I think it is simpler than this, we take an action that we can both take and demonstrate having taken it, whether or not that solves the problem. If you are a politician and your constituents are telling you to 'fix education' you can't create a 'Khan Academy' what you can do is add requirements that teachers 'do better' and since better is subjective you create an artificial measure of 'better.' Then you report back that you helped to 'fix education' when you not only didn't fix it, you didn't even move the ball down the field. However this mythical representative didn't have take the hard road of pissing off some entrenched interests in education in order to change it. Not only would that cut into next year's re-election budget, there would be nothing concrete to show for it and a lot of soft money ads in your district saying how you were bad for education.
calibraxis 15y ago
The author mentions Noam Chomsky, and I think he cuts to the point of the educational system: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq6lFOhLJ0c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq6lFOhLJ0c) Points out that one goal is obedience; and even "stupidity" in the system is useful, in that if you're willing enough to go along with obviously stupid orders, you'll pass through to the next level. (In other words, it filters for obedience.) Obviously, an educational system reflects the distribution of power in a society. This is particularly obvious when we observe an official enemy nation; we have no trouble seeing how they try indoctrinating students along the interests of those with power. Unfortunately, we're taught to have blindspots when it comes to our own societies. There are of course better educational systems. Unlike the model of dumping knowledge into your empty head, they focus on encouraging the growth of your natural capacities and internal forces. I suspect that many "autodidacts" are just people who want to escape the problems of dominant education, with whatever resources they have.
wtn 15y ago
Here are sample exams from past years: http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/home.html http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/home....
- wizzard 15y ago
  Thanks for finding those. I looked through the 2010 test and the essay questions specifically say "Use details from the passage to support your answer." Details, plural, meaning two or more. I'm not seeing essay grading instructions, but I'm leaning towards thinking this is a bit overblown.
darksaga 15y ago
This is pretty typical. Slamming the standardised tests, without actually giving a better alternative. Maybe instead of complaining about this, these teachers should get together and figure out how to keep from letting so many kids fail out of the educational system. Good, bad or indifferent this was the plan of the "no child left behind" initiative (which had very strong bi-partisan support mind you) which is now heavily under fire for other reasons. Its too bad most of the local governments believe throwing money at the situation is the solution. In the Minneapolis School Districts, they're spending close to $13K per student. By comparison, in a suburban school district, they're actually just over $9K per student. The Minneapolis graduation rate? 49%. The suburban school? 98%.
- kingkilr 15y ago
  An alternative to what? Standardized testing? How about, non-standard testing? Do we have such a dearth of qualified teachers that we think we need to strip the people in charge of the classroom of any discretion? What sort of cognitive dissonance does it take to say, "Gee, this person can teach our kids the material, but they probably have no ability to evaluate whether the kids learned it".
  - quanticle 15y ago
    What makes you think that your child's teacher is actually qualified to teach the material that he or she is teaching? Teaching degrees in the United States are a joke. They consistently attract the dregs of the college applicant pool. The fact that standardized tests measure students is a secondary benefit. The entire point of No Child Left Behind was to identify the worst teachers and either 1) get them to improve or 2) get them to leave. I wholly agree with this goal. Unlike most of the people making educational policy, I'm still young enough to remember my high school experience. I remember math teachers that didn't know how to solve the problems they assigned. I remember civics teachers who knew less about the American Revolution than I did. And I didn't grow up in the inner city. I grew up in a fairly prosperous suburb. My school was regarded as being in the top 10% of schools in the state. I shudder to think how bad the teachers are in high poverty schools. To get at your point more directly, I don't think there's any cognitive dissonance at all. I think the basic premise is being questioned: "Is this person qualified to teach our kids the material?" Do I agree with the way we're measuring how the material is being learned? No. Our current standardized tests are like yardsticks, rather than calipers. But even a yardstick is better than guesswork.
cinquemb 15y ago
If i could i would up vote this to oblivion. The current system stomps out creativity and meaningful questioning. And the best part about this, it doesn't stop after highschool. College just is more BS and more tests. Followed by the promise of mind-numbing jobs and a weekend existence. This is me, a student who has had enough the crap. http://12most.com/2012/03/21/reasons-for-not-going-back-to-college/ http://12most.com/2012/03/21/reasons-for-not-going-back-to-c...
- tikhonj 15y ago
  Hmm, that post does not reflect my college experience at all. For one, none of my tests are about memorization or rote learning--all of them are either open book or allow you a page or two of notes and all require critical and a thorough understanding of the material. In fact, a bunch of my tests actually introduced new material in the questions--the first time I learned about tries was on a midterm! The question explained what they are and how they work; I just had to implement them. My classes also encourage creative thinking. Most of the projects are open-ended to some degree, and some are almost entirely free. The lectures (at least for the more advanced courses) tend to be more interactive and involve thinking as much as listening to the professor. The people I've met are also different--nobody cares too much about grades and everybody has side projects and interests outside of classes. Also, quite a lot of them are absurdly smart and exactly the sort of people I would like to work with in the future. And the courses I've taken do provide value: I have a much better breadth in various subjects than I would had I covered the same material on my own. Also, I have done a bunch of cool stuff I would not have done on my own, like designing a simple processor. I would never have thought to do it on my own, but it has really helped me to understand how computers work. Also, there are resources (like graduate courses) for getting more depth in topics I'm interested in. I think I would learn more from talking about papers and developments with a group (basically how some graduate courses work) than I would just by reading the same papers on my own. It also provides more structure and organization, so I don't have to curate what to learn about myself. So really, I think you may have had an unfortunate experience with college, but your criticisms are not entirely universal. College may not be for everybody, but I think it's the right choice for plenty of people.
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jcampbell1 15y ago
I have no way to judge this teacher's letter. It would be really helpful if the tests were published online, then I could evaluate if this teacher's waxing poetic has merit. Does anyone have a links to sample questions or a past test? Everyone likes to praise or bitch about the testing, but has anyone actually seen the test?
- lylejohnson 15y ago
  Elsewhere in this thread, user wtn has posted a link to past years' exams.
lmkg 15y ago
Standardized tests are optimized for grading. They are designed to be evaluated quickly, and objectively. Scantrons can be graded mechanically, and these essays described in the article can be graded with no thought and a minimum of judgment. These goals, efficiency and objectivity, impose constraints on how you can test competence, and as far as I can tell those constraints are simply insurmountable. I have taken one and exactly one category of standardized test that I respected, and that was the AP tests. The essay questions for AP Lit was graded by having three English teachers read the essay and evaluate whether your answer indicated you understood the meaning of the passage, and how it relates to the work as a whole. In other words, it was done the hard way. And it was better than any other standardized test I've ever taken at correlating performance with understanding. The problem is scale. Scaling is the only advantage of the current form of tests, and that's enough. Any replacement is going to have to address scaling. (My hare-brained solution: Grading essays is what teachers do over summer vacation. It's enough excess labor to remove that design constraints.)
- mattwrench 15y ago
  Rather than worry about scaling, why not get rid of the essay sections completely? I have an issue with standardized tests basically setting public school curriculum, but most of the essays I remember didn't even do that (and based on the OP's piece, these essays aren't testing writing ability either.) I recall the (Texas) essay prompts used to be incredibly vague and had nothing to do with what we were learning in class at the time. Prompts like "Write about a time you overcame a challenge" come to mind. Back then, I assumed they were just testing our ability to communicate ideas to an audience, but really all they wanted was the default 5-paragraph essay. It was little more than fill-in-the-blanks to this outline, rather than actual writing. What made the AP Literature and Rhetoric tests so good was that everything we learned in class was applicable to them. Obviously, my teachers took time to explicitly practice the AP essays, but every other activity also helped feed my knowledge of the subject that I could use to answer the essays on the AP test. Other standardized test essays just seem to be antithetical to any possible purpose.
- adrianbg 15y ago
  The scaling problem may be addressable by having older students evaluate younger students' work: there should generally be about the same number of each. You'd need to solve some other problems as well but that is a start.
jcampbell1 15y ago
> I will also give you the best advice I can, ... “When they give you lined paper, write the other way.” What the hell does that even mean? If that is your best advice, you are probably full of bad advice. I cannot comprehend the level of confusion required to think that quote is clever.
- cinquemb 15y ago
  There is more being said with those words than just whats written. "le contexte est plus fort que le concept"
  - vacri 15y ago
    or, curiously juxtaposed, "to read between the lines"...
- johngunderman 15y ago
  I interpreted as "write on the paper at a 90 degree angle to the lines" (aka not the way you should be doing it). This seems to be a standard rehashing of "going against the grain", advice to be different, to not follow expectations. That's not what I would necessarily call bad advice.
  - Jach 15y ago
    The Esteemed Great Leader pg might say, or rather he did say in http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html which I'll just quote: "Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just refuse to."
- LVB 15y ago
  I agree. The school-issued iPads will auto-rotate the virtual paper making this advice pointless.
- joelmichael 15y ago
xinliang 15y ago
Merely complaining about the standard tests does not help. Unless, students and teachers make a protest against it, eg all students decide to score zero marks for a national test. But that is very unlikely to happen, some people are very stubborn about the test system because they get the tricks, they can do well in it. What a better way of changing the education system is to start a new private school applying a better education system and to get good results in a sense that high percent of students become the top leaders in their arena; to show the education ministry what a better education system is like ( the education ministry is surely aware of the complaint from the public, the only reason they have not changed the system yet is that they really don't what kind of system would be better).
NaOH 15y ago
I worked for a publisher of standardized tests for a number of years, though this company did not develop the assessments used by the State of New York. What this teacher doesn't seem to appreciate is the process behind how these tests are written. They are, seemingly by the nature of this society, produced in a manner which can't capture distinctive teaching styles like this woman has. The process of making a test can start with whatever a state legislature has mandated will be assessed. Mind you, before that, there is all the negotiations and politicking that takes place. Surprising to most, this involves state education leaders, business people, religious folks, politicians, parents, etc. It's a kitchen sink of divergent interests with everyone claiming to have the best interests of the children at the fore. Once the legislation is in place and a contractor has been secured to aid with development, there are loads more meetings and committees deciding what is appropriate assessment within each subject (math, reading, writing, etc.). Again, there are loads of different people with loads of different interests, all of whom believe they are thinking foremost about the children. It's also in this stage that whatever research or trends in assessment styles will be considered (though some takes place earlier, too). There's usually a mentality of "You go first" to new assessment techniques. States are more willing to try something if another state has already done something similar and there is publicly available data to support the perceived efficacy. At the next stage is actual development of the assessment materials. We would split this up, part of it being done in-house and a bunch contracted to teachers around the state. Yes, we tried to get teachers from every district. For the contracted work, this would mean paying teachers to write a number of questions for a specific test (say, fifth-grade math). These people got paid for each question they wrote regardless of the quality or usability of what they submitted. The worst material to write was probably math simply due to the dry nature of the subject and the fact that creative approaches to math are usually verboten in education here. Reading tests were often the most difficult to develop. The work on the tests wasn't bad, but securing copyright permissions and, often, permission to edit was brutal. If there was a magazine piece, the complications were often much worse because usage rights might have to be secured from multiple parties (publisher, author and photographers). Mind you, this was also in the late '90s, so the Internet wasn't as useful a tool for tracking down rights holders or potential materials, and email was still a secondary means of communication, definitely behind the phone and often behind the fax, too. Securing rights for all the materials we wanted to use took months just because of how hard it was to find people and communicate with them. And states didn't have much of any budget to pay, so securing rights at minimal cost was a big hurdle. Often, the best pieces were never used due to how much a rights holder wanted. So questions would come in from all over the state, then we would clean them up. That was multi-layered work. It might mean simple grammar and punctuation fixes, but it also meant correcting the format mandated by the state education departments. For example, when I was doing this work, states would not allow us to put a negative in the question. But there were loads of these types of rules, like making certain there was parallel structure among answer choices, not having any choices significant;y shorter or longer, etc. Once we had done an initial tightening of the new bank of material, all the teachers we'd contracted and state administrators were brought in for a week of refinement and further development of materials. These were simultaneously productive and political sessions. A lot of work would be done, but there was also a lot of on-site jockeying. Teachers would say things like, "This is a great story, but my kids won't be able to relate to it." State administrators would hear this a few times about a piece and then pull the material from any further consideration, not even pilot testing. Quality was often a secondary consideration to how teachers felt their students would do, and it was sometimes tertiary to other teacher goals (what they believed was important, their personal agendas, etc.). Those last few steps would then repeat themselves. We would tighten up the work that had been developed, the graphics department would develop accompanying graphics where needed and handle page layout, proofreading was a persistent process, and then we would bring the teachers back in for another review of the nearly final materials. Then we would do another round of tightening-up the material. Proofing, requesting minuscule tweaks from the graphics department, getting state approval for any substantive change (no matter how minor), etc. That was when we could begin building an actual test using these new materials and existing questions from previous tests. We'd also begin to development the accompanying manuals which instructed the schools how to handle the materials and the teachers how to administer the tests. As you can imagine, these had to be perfect. When you have a 100-page document with loads of instructions around specific details, errors are not permissible. (I haven't done this work in 12 years, but to this day my eyes proofread nearly everything that comes before them. I can be at a simple restaurant, and the menu will list "pan fried chicken." I instinctively note the missing hyphen.) Of course, all that development work only went to pilot materials. I don't remember exactly, but a student might take a test that was about 70% questions that counted and the rest were new questions being evaluated. Once the tests came back, data analysis was run on everything, enabling us to see what worked and what didn't. Sometimes a question was too hard or too easy, sometimes one group of people simply had issues with a question. My memory is hazy, but I want to say that about one-third of the questions that were piloted became usable. Maybe 10-20% of them got re-piloted because the data showed a way we could possibly fix the question (e.g., one of the answer choices was too attractive, so a re-write of that might be enough of a fix to make the question worth trying again). On the other side was the scoring for written questions. We had the state-issued rubrics, and those were our guiding force. I (and others) would train the part-time people we hired to do this scoring. The company I worked for hired these people largely off of a standard bank of psychological assessments. The company owner felt these gave all the information we needed to evaluate these potential employees. Easily, the biggest challenge was getting scorers to accept the rubrics. A student might write a quality piece about something, but it might have been well off topic or not sufficiently on topic based on what the state wanted to assess. During training sessions, I spent a lot of my time diffusing anger from these people and getting them to focus on the rubrics. Gently humor was key in that regard, and I don't recall anyone proving to be a long-term problem in terms of accepting the rubrics. The other big challenge to this work was the repetition. Reading the answers to the same questions over and over was mentally challenging for people. I don't blame them. Most kids of a specific age aren't too creative when fed a question for a state test. For example, ask them who is a public figure they admire and why, and you're likely to get the bulk of the answers focusing on just a few people (athletes, popular music stars, etc.). For the written assessments, 10% of the student materials were scored twice (by separate people) to ensure accuracy of grades and as a way to identify issues with potential scorers. I've tried to refrain from too much commentary, but there is no doubt that the materials developed for tests are beaten down throughout the process by bureaucracy and various interests. It's much like the corporate world when the firm has way too many meetings in the course of developing something and there is a leadership vacuum. Oh, sure, there is a person or two who is technically leading things and may have veto power, but there are far too many diverse interests for anything of distinct quality to emerge. With one of the states for which my employer did work, a woman like the teacher in the link would be invited to participate in the following year's development. The lead state administrator always referred to this as "getting that person's buy-in." And truthfully, it seemed to work because the teachers brought in for this reason felt like they had a voice in the process. None that I saw seemed to appreciate the depth of the whole process, so they all seemed to think they had made a difference in the development of the tests. More specific to the author of the link, she seems like she's probably a good teacher, better than most. The education system, especially when it comes to statewide assessments, isn't prepared to appreciably handle outliers like her. She probably knows that. She probably knows the real battle to change these kinds of tests is not one she's prepared to tackle. I don't blame her. Nor do I blame her for making a public critique like she did.
fleitz 15y ago
This kind of stuff is the backbone of the public education system. John Taylor Gatto outlines very well the six lessons every student is taught. I think this fits well with lesson 5: In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers. Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
sbmassey 15y ago
Education is one of the things that democratic states should not get involved in: there is a troubling feedback loop when a state whose claim to legitimacy is the votes of it's citizens gets involved in activities which determine what those votes will be, and education is just such an activity: for the same reason that there shouldn't be government newspapers or television stations, there shouldn't be government educators.
cafard 15y ago
"ou can compose a “Gettysburg Address” for the 21st century on the apportioned lines in your test booklet, but if you’ve provided only one fact from the text you read in preparation, then you will earn only half credit. In your constructed response—no matter how well written, correct, intelligent, noble, beautiful, and meaningful it is—if you’ve not collected any specific facts from the provided readings (even if you happen to know more information about the chosen topic than the readings provide), then you will get a zero." I of course wrote Gettysburg addresses routinely in 8th grade English. No doubt the reporters at the Washington Post did, too, which is why I've sometimes had to read a story two or three times to find out who did what to whom. Creativity, ain't it great? Having said that, I think that the mania for measurement does have little to do with actual instruction.
methoddk 15y ago
She's 100% right. Standardized testing is a disease to the education in this country. The grade school system in this country is nothing but a babysitting program for people who aren't old enough to vote.
ryanoneill 15y ago
"There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. ... Because the owners of this country don't want that. ... They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. ... They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run their machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept ..." -- George Carlin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GseyaEibb_4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GseyaEibb_4
chernevik 15y ago
The author claims that these stupid and clumsy tests are of "a force that wants you ignorant and pliable, and that needs you able to fill in the boxes and follow instructions". If we're going to believe in some malign conspiracy hindering the public schools, wouldn't we look for it first in those institutions determining what does and doesn't happen in those schools? If we compare those institutions' stated purposes with their interests and actual behaviors, would we find them self-consistent? admirable? What would happen to their influence if that analysis were performed more deeply and frequently? And if we imagined the tools of such a force, what would they be? Control over the language of debate, insistence on particular assumptions, a particular orthodoxy of procedure and calculation, prohibition of certain questions as unnecessary or beside the point? Would such a force be honest about its aims and methods? Or would it seek to obscure them, and claim some different, more popular aims? We might begin looking for this malign 'fungus' by noting these tests were instituted to establish some accountability. Why exactly was that? And why were these obviously lousy tools chosen -- what alternatives were discussed, and why were they rejected? Yes, I can very well imagine a force, answering that description, wishing to limit the critical faculties produced by our public schools. I can imagine it very well indeed.
ScottBurson 15y ago
Could a voucher system really be worse than this? It would put all the control back in the hands of the parents. Some would misuse it; we know this. But we have the Internet now. Surely a Yelp-equivalent for voucher schools would quickly identify the good and bad schools. Competition would ensue. Would it be perfect? No. Some parents would prefer religious indoctrination to actual education. Others simply wouldn't care. But perfection is not the correct standard. What we have now is dismal and getting worse.
- thisisnotmyname 15y ago
  How exactly do vouchers solve the problem of poorly written standardized tests?
  - ScottBurson 15y ago
    By junking the entire system we have now. The poorly written standardized tests are just a symptom of a system in which many people, with various interests, have a say in what and how children are to be educated. The result is education by committee -- exactly what the OP is complaining about. A voucher system would render the educational bureaucracy superfluous. Parents who thought their kids were being poorly served could move them to a different school, or start their own school if nothing else were available. This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Some parents home-school now. There already exists a small industry providing them with educational materials. I know, this is a radical idea. It hasn't caught on in the 20 or so years since it was first seriously floated -- why would it now? But meanwhile the quality of our kids' education continues to spiral downward. I think the only possible solutions will be radical ones.
warmfuzzykitten 15y ago
Putting aside for the moment that favorite punching bag - standardized tests - I question the rather overwrought tone of the piece, beginning with the title: 'A Test You Need to Fail'. This doesn't seem particularly good advice for students, nor does applauding the kinds of test answers she cites. Anyone should know that a response like "I don't think it applies to either one" with no supporting argument to exhibit the slightest knowledge of the subject would, even must, receive zero credit, with a "SAY WHY!!" scribbled in red in the margin. Students are very good at holding facile opinions out of ignorance, and should not be praised for it. Yes, a good teacher can spin a response like that to gold in the classroom, by eliciting the threads of actual knowledge upon which the opinion hangs, but a test can hardly do so. I can understand a teacher lamenting that she didn't know and pass on to her students that test graders would be looking for facts and not opinions, but it's not the test's fault she didn't. It is hardly "criminal" that standardized tests are designed to be objectively gradable. If the questions are poorly designed - which other commenters seem to have assumed, even though no evidence for it is presented here - isn't that more likely to be the result of mediocrity than of malevolence? I was likewise unconvinced by her citation of Noam Chomsky's remark. However much or little one considers Chomsky a "great man", one thing he is not is an expert on elementary/secondary education. He has opinions, like the rest of us. Why not cite the opinions of Jonas Salk or Stephen Sondheim? Chomsky can, however, be counted upon to state his opinions in stark, emotionally charged language, and a bit of this polemical propensity seems to have rubbed off on the (ex-)teacher.
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- bluekeybox 15y ago
  I hate to sound McCarthyan, but if a teacher recommends her students to fail tests while also name-dropping Chomsky and referring to him as "the great man" in the same text, her ulterior goal can be hardly anything other than subversion of capitalistic system. Sometimes things are more black-and-white than we are willing to believe.
grannyg00se 15y ago
I'm definitely not for standardized testing, and I think grade school is more about subsidized daycare than effective learning. But the letter is a little bit extreme when suggesting failure of the test. Any sufficiently intelligent child will be able to express their individuality and creativity outside of that particular testing environment. While writing the test, you can choose to recognize what it is, and supply the formulaic answers expected to do well. Then forget about it and continue being creative an excellent in your other endeavours. There are many scenarios in life where you are expected to follow a procedure. The procedure may not be ideal, and it may even be completely counterproductive. But you jump through the hoops, and apply yourself to the expected outcome of the procedure if you want to succeed. If I were advising my child I would tell them it's nonsense, the adults messed it up, but try to do well anyway given the rules and expected answers. Playing along can be an important skill. To be used judiciously.
bluekeybox 15y ago
I stopped reading when she mentioned "the great man" Chomsky.
sreyemhtes 15y ago
It's truly disgusting what has become of education in the United States. I know many teachers and all of them are outstanding people and I trust them fully. Yet it is the system that seems determined to hinder them at every corner.
mumrah 15y ago
As I recall the written portion of AP science exams was like this. No prose necessary - you could just write a bullet list of the required facts and get full credit

464 points by saulrh 15y ago

And keep pushing. Keep writing these letters. Keep not accepting things "because that's just the way it is". Keep getting the news out. Even if it takes 10 or 30 years. It's worth it to provide real educations for the current youth of society. It means a future worth living in.

tkahn6 15y ago

Also see, a study done by an MIT professor about SAT essay scores and essay length. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&position= http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4634566 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4634566 Money quote: "It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the longer the essay, the higher the score."

GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
What better way to qualify people for academia?

tokenadult 15y ago

Or, in the alternative, learn the rubric, take the silly test according to that rubric (it looks to me as if any student who is reasonably bright and really well taught could rapidly learn to produce answers that fit that rubric), and then write a really well crafted proposal, based on research, for how to make the test better. An eighth grade class that produced a lot of students capable of doing that would be very impressive and would get a lot of attention.

jes5199 15y ago

Our standardized tests lead classes to a sort of "malicious compliance" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance - the tests are So Important to the schools that everything becomes a cram session, in lieu of actual teaching and exploring ideas. It doesn't have to be that way. There are counterexamples: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame... [Edit: (Technically it's just Goodhart's Law when there's no malicious intent. Hard to tell the difference sometimes, though. http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/ ) ]

waterlesscloud 15y ago
You see a lot of complaints about standardized tests, but the simple fact of the matter is that standardized tests are not going away. People want a way to evaluate student performance in a way that works across many schools, districts, and states. By definition, that's going to be via standardized testing. Complaining about them will not help. Make better tests. Teach better around the tests. Those options are fine. But implying that the very idea of standardized testing is constricting is a waste of time. They aren't going anywhere.
- jes5199 15y ago
  It doesn't have to be a black and white question - I think there would be benefits to having fewer standardized tests, and to de-emphasize them when making policy (especially funding decisions) in favor of other metrics.
  - chives 15y ago
    I love standardized tests, they are easy. Really easy. Anyone who wants to ace them, can and will, many without studying. Are they helpful? Who knows, most likely not at all.
    - eropple 15y ago
      > Anyone who wants to ace them, can and will This is an amazingly provincial comment and it does not reflect well upon you. Rather than assuming malice in your comment, however, I would gently suggest that it would be rather difficult for someone passed from grade to grade without basic functional literacy to ace such a test. Or, for a sneakier, harder to quantify example, there are "standardized" tests in circulation (and I was exposed to some of them in middle and high school) where certain cultural information was implicitly demanded. Probably not a problem for middle-class suburban kids, but unlikely to be appropriate for underprivileged very-rural kids (of which the testing area had many). A narrow worldview isn't something to be ashamed of, but it is something to recognize and compensate for when making statements like yours.

anigbrowl 15y ago

Well, don't link to or quote from the material under discussion, or gives examples of any questions or the like - that might leave your readers informed rather than merely exercised.

vacri 15y ago
... you mean the intended audience that has already taken the test? Surely they're already aware of not just example questions, but the specific ones asked?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

narrator 15y ago

It seems in America we solve our problems in one of two ways: A. Spending more money indiscriminately. Money always makes everything better. Just look at health care! B: Getting the federal government to take over and centralize everything. Creative ideas are almost always ignored unless they are a means of executing strategy A or B.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
I think it is simpler than this, we take an action that we can both take and demonstrate having taken it, whether or not that solves the problem. If you are a politician and your constituents are telling you to 'fix education' you can't create a 'Khan Academy' what you can do is add requirements that teachers 'do better' and since better is subjective you create an artificial measure of 'better.' Then you report back that you helped to 'fix education' when you not only didn't fix it, you didn't even move the ball down the field. However this mythical representative didn't have take the hard road of pissing off some entrenched interests in education in order to change it. Not only would that cut into next year's re-election budget, there would be nothing concrete to show for it and a lot of soft money ads in your district saying how you were bad for education.

calibraxis 15y ago

The author mentions Noam Chomsky, and I think he cuts to the point of the educational system: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq6lFOhLJ0c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq6lFOhLJ0c) Points out that one goal is obedience; and even "stupidity" in the system is useful, in that if you're willing enough to go along with obviously stupid orders, you'll pass through to the next level. (In other words, it filters for obedience.) Obviously, an educational system reflects the distribution of power in a society. This is particularly obvious when we observe an official enemy nation; we have no trouble seeing how they try indoctrinating students along the interests of those with power. Unfortunately, we're taught to have blindspots when it comes to our own societies. There are of course better educational systems. Unlike the model of dumping knowledge into your empty head, they focus on encouraging the growth of your natural capacities and internal forces. I suspect that many "autodidacts" are just people who want to escape the problems of dominant education, with whatever resources they have.

wtn 15y ago

Here are sample exams from past years: http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/home.html http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/home....

wizzard 15y ago
Thanks for finding those. I looked through the 2010 test and the essay questions specifically say "Use details from the passage to support your answer." Details, plural, meaning two or more. I'm not seeing essay grading instructions, but I'm leaning towards thinking this is a bit overblown.

darksaga 15y ago

This is pretty typical. Slamming the standardised tests, without actually giving a better alternative. Maybe instead of complaining about this, these teachers should get together and figure out how to keep from letting so many kids fail out of the educational system. Good, bad or indifferent this was the plan of the "no child left behind" initiative (which had very strong bi-partisan support mind you) which is now heavily under fire for other reasons. Its too bad most of the local governments believe throwing money at the situation is the solution. In the Minneapolis School Districts, they're spending close to $13K per student. By comparison, in a suburban school district, they're actually just over $9K per student. The Minneapolis graduation rate? 49%. The suburban school? 98%.

kingkilr 15y ago
An alternative to what? Standardized testing? How about, non-standard testing? Do we have such a dearth of qualified teachers that we think we need to strip the people in charge of the classroom of any discretion? What sort of cognitive dissonance does it take to say, "Gee, this person can teach our kids the material, but they probably have no ability to evaluate whether the kids learned it".
- quanticle 15y ago
  What makes you think that your child's teacher is actually qualified to teach the material that he or she is teaching? Teaching degrees in the United States are a joke. They consistently attract the dregs of the college applicant pool. The fact that standardized tests measure students is a secondary benefit. The entire point of No Child Left Behind was to identify the worst teachers and either 1) get them to improve or 2) get them to leave. I wholly agree with this goal. Unlike most of the people making educational policy, I'm still young enough to remember my high school experience. I remember math teachers that didn't know how to solve the problems they assigned. I remember civics teachers who knew less about the American Revolution than I did. And I didn't grow up in the inner city. I grew up in a fairly prosperous suburb. My school was regarded as being in the top 10% of schools in the state. I shudder to think how bad the teachers are in high poverty schools. To get at your point more directly, I don't think there's any cognitive dissonance at all. I think the basic premise is being questioned: "Is this person qualified to teach our kids the material?" Do I agree with the way we're measuring how the material is being learned? No. Our current standardized tests are like yardsticks, rather than calipers. But even a yardstick is better than guesswork.

cinquemb 15y ago

If i could i would up vote this to oblivion. The current system stomps out creativity and meaningful questioning. And the best part about this, it doesn't stop after highschool. College just is more BS and more tests. Followed by the promise of mind-numbing jobs and a weekend existence. This is me, a student who has had enough the crap. http://12most.com/2012/03/21/reasons-for-not-going-back-to-college/ http://12most.com/2012/03/21/reasons-for-not-going-back-to-c...

tikhonj 15y ago
Hmm, that post does not reflect my college experience at all. For one, none of my tests are about memorization or rote learning--all of them are either open book or allow you a page or two of notes and all require critical and a thorough understanding of the material. In fact, a bunch of my tests actually introduced new material in the questions--the first time I learned about tries was on a midterm! The question explained what they are and how they work; I just had to implement them. My classes also encourage creative thinking. Most of the projects are open-ended to some degree, and some are almost entirely free. The lectures (at least for the more advanced courses) tend to be more interactive and involve thinking as much as listening to the professor. The people I've met are also different--nobody cares too much about grades and everybody has side projects and interests outside of classes. Also, quite a lot of them are absurdly smart and exactly the sort of people I would like to work with in the future. And the courses I've taken do provide value: I have a much better breadth in various subjects than I would had I covered the same material on my own. Also, I have done a bunch of cool stuff I would not have done on my own, like designing a simple processor. I would never have thought to do it on my own, but it has really helped me to understand how computers work. Also, there are resources (like graduate courses) for getting more depth in topics I'm interested in. I think I would learn more from talking about papers and developments with a group (basically how some graduate courses work) than I would just by reading the same papers on my own. It also provides more structure and organization, so I don't have to curate what to learn about myself. So really, I think you may have had an unfortunate experience with college, but your criticisms are not entirely universal. College may not be for everybody, but I think it's the right choice for plenty of people.
- 15y ago

jcampbell1 15y ago

I have no way to judge this teacher's letter. It would be really helpful if the tests were published online, then I could evaluate if this teacher's waxing poetic has merit. Does anyone have a links to sample questions or a past test? Everyone likes to praise or bitch about the testing, but has anyone actually seen the test?

lylejohnson 15y ago
Elsewhere in this thread, user wtn has posted a link to past years' exams.

lmkg 15y ago

Standardized tests are optimized for grading. They are designed to be evaluated quickly, and objectively. Scantrons can be graded mechanically, and these essays described in the article can be graded with no thought and a minimum of judgment. These goals, efficiency and objectivity, impose constraints on how you can test competence, and as far as I can tell those constraints are simply insurmountable. I have taken one and exactly one category of standardized test that I respected, and that was the AP tests. The essay questions for AP Lit was graded by having three English teachers read the essay and evaluate whether your answer indicated you understood the meaning of the passage, and how it relates to the work as a whole. In other words, it was done the hard way. And it was better than any other standardized test I've ever taken at correlating performance with understanding. The problem is scale. Scaling is the only advantage of the current form of tests, and that's enough. Any replacement is going to have to address scaling. (My hare-brained solution: Grading essays is what teachers do over summer vacation. It's enough excess labor to remove that design constraints.)

mattwrench 15y ago
Rather than worry about scaling, why not get rid of the essay sections completely? I have an issue with standardized tests basically setting public school curriculum, but most of the essays I remember didn't even do that (and based on the OP's piece, these essays aren't testing writing ability either.) I recall the (Texas) essay prompts used to be incredibly vague and had nothing to do with what we were learning in class at the time. Prompts like "Write about a time you overcame a challenge" come to mind. Back then, I assumed they were just testing our ability to communicate ideas to an audience, but really all they wanted was the default 5-paragraph essay. It was little more than fill-in-the-blanks to this outline, rather than actual writing. What made the AP Literature and Rhetoric tests so good was that everything we learned in class was applicable to them. Obviously, my teachers took time to explicitly practice the AP essays, but every other activity also helped feed my knowledge of the subject that I could use to answer the essays on the AP test. Other standardized test essays just seem to be antithetical to any possible purpose.
adrianbg 15y ago
The scaling problem may be addressable by having older students evaluate younger students' work: there should generally be about the same number of each. You'd need to solve some other problems as well but that is a start.

jcampbell1 15y ago

> I will also give you the best advice I can, ... “When they give you lined paper, write the other way.” What the hell does that even mean? If that is your best advice, you are probably full of bad advice. I cannot comprehend the level of confusion required to think that quote is clever.

cinquemb 15y ago
There is more being said with those words than just whats written. "le contexte est plus fort que le concept"
- vacri 15y ago
  or, curiously juxtaposed, "to read between the lines"...
johngunderman 15y ago
I interpreted as "write on the paper at a 90 degree angle to the lines" (aka not the way you should be doing it). This seems to be a standard rehashing of "going against the grain", advice to be different, to not follow expectations. That's not what I would necessarily call bad advice.
- Jach 15y ago
  The Esteemed Great Leader pg might say, or rather he did say in http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html which I'll just quote: "Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just refuse to."
LVB 15y ago
I agree. The school-issued iPads will auto-rotate the virtual paper making this advice pointless.
joelmichael 15y ago

xinliang 15y ago

Merely complaining about the standard tests does not help. Unless, students and teachers make a protest against it, eg all students decide to score zero marks for a national test. But that is very unlikely to happen, some people are very stubborn about the test system because they get the tricks, they can do well in it. What a better way of changing the education system is to start a new private school applying a better education system and to get good results in a sense that high percent of students become the top leaders in their arena; to show the education ministry what a better education system is like ( the education ministry is surely aware of the complaint from the public, the only reason they have not changed the system yet is that they really don't what kind of system would be better).

NaOH 15y ago

I worked for a publisher of standardized tests for a number of years, though this company did not develop the assessments used by the State of New York. What this teacher doesn't seem to appreciate is the process behind how these tests are written. They are, seemingly by the nature of this society, produced in a manner which can't capture distinctive teaching styles like this woman has. The process of making a test can start with whatever a state legislature has mandated will be assessed. Mind you, before that, there is all the negotiations and politicking that takes place. Surprising to most, this involves state education leaders, business people, religious folks, politicians, parents, etc. It's a kitchen sink of divergent interests with everyone claiming to have the best interests of the children at the fore. Once the legislation is in place and a contractor has been secured to aid with development, there are loads more meetings and committees deciding what is appropriate assessment within each subject (math, reading, writing, etc.). Again, there are loads of different people with loads of different interests, all of whom believe they are thinking foremost about the children. It's also in this stage that whatever research or trends in assessment styles will be considered (though some takes place earlier, too). There's usually a mentality of "You go first" to new assessment techniques. States are more willing to try something if another state has already done something similar and there is publicly available data to support the perceived efficacy. At the next stage is actual development of the assessment materials. We would split this up, part of it being done in-house and a bunch contracted to teachers around the state. Yes, we tried to get teachers from every district. For the contracted work, this would mean paying teachers to write a number of questions for a specific test (say, fifth-grade math). These people got paid for each question they wrote regardless of the quality or usability of what they submitted. The worst material to write was probably math simply due to the dry nature of the subject and the fact that creative approaches to math are usually verboten in education here. Reading tests were often the most difficult to develop. The work on the tests wasn't bad, but securing copyright permissions and, often, permission to edit was brutal. If there was a magazine piece, the complications were often much worse because usage rights might have to be secured from multiple parties (publisher, author and photographers). Mind you, this was also in the late '90s, so the Internet wasn't as useful a tool for tracking down rights holders or potential materials, and email was still a secondary means of communication, definitely behind the phone and often behind the fax, too. Securing rights for all the materials we wanted to use took months just because of how hard it was to find people and communicate with them. And states didn't have much of any budget to pay, so securing rights at minimal cost was a big hurdle. Often, the best pieces were never used due to how much a rights holder wanted. So questions would come in from all over the state, then we would clean them up. That was multi-layered work. It might mean simple grammar and punctuation fixes, but it also meant correcting the format mandated by the state education departments. For example, when I was doing this work, states would not allow us to put a negative in the question. But there were loads of these types of rules, like making certain there was parallel structure among answer choices, not having any choices significant;y shorter or longer, etc. Once we had done an initial tightening of the new bank of material, all the teachers we'd contracted and state administrators were brought in for a week of refinement and further development of materials. These were simultaneously productive and political sessions. A lot of work would be done, but there was also a lot of on-site jockeying. Teachers would say things like, "This is a great story, but my kids won't be able to relate to it." State administrators would hear this a few times about a piece and then pull the material from any further consideration, not even pilot testing. Quality was often a secondary consideration to how teachers felt their students would do, and it was sometimes tertiary to other teacher goals (what they believed was important, their personal agendas, etc.). Those last few steps would then repeat themselves. We would tighten up the work that had been developed, the graphics department would develop accompanying graphics where needed and handle page layout, proofreading was a persistent process, and then we would bring the teachers back in for another review of the nearly final materials. Then we would do another round of tightening-up the material. Proofing, requesting minuscule tweaks from the graphics department, getting state approval for any substantive change (no matter how minor), etc. That was when we could begin building an actual test using these new materials and existing questions from previous tests. We'd also begin to development the accompanying manuals which instructed the schools how to handle the materials and the teachers how to administer the tests. As you can imagine, these had to be perfect. When you have a 100-page document with loads of instructions around specific details, errors are not permissible. (I haven't done this work in 12 years, but to this day my eyes proofread nearly everything that comes before them. I can be at a simple restaurant, and the menu will list "pan fried chicken." I instinctively note the missing hyphen.) Of course, all that development work only went to pilot materials. I don't remember exactly, but a student might take a test that was about 70% questions that counted and the rest were new questions being evaluated. Once the tests came back, data analysis was run on everything, enabling us to see what worked and what didn't. Sometimes a question was too hard or too easy, sometimes one group of people simply had issues with a question. My memory is hazy, but I want to say that about one-third of the questions that were piloted became usable. Maybe 10-20% of them got re-piloted because the data showed a way we could possibly fix the question (e.g., one of the answer choices was too attractive, so a re-write of that might be enough of a fix to make the question worth trying again). On the other side was the scoring for written questions. We had the state-issued rubrics, and those were our guiding force. I (and others) would train the part-time people we hired to do this scoring. The company I worked for hired these people largely off of a standard bank of psychological assessments. The company owner felt these gave all the information we needed to evaluate these potential employees. Easily, the biggest challenge was getting scorers to accept the rubrics. A student might write a quality piece about something, but it might have been well off topic or not sufficiently on topic based on what the state wanted to assess. During training sessions, I spent a lot of my time diffusing anger from these people and getting them to focus on the rubrics. Gently humor was key in that regard, and I don't recall anyone proving to be a long-term problem in terms of accepting the rubrics. The other big challenge to this work was the repetition. Reading the answers to the same questions over and over was mentally challenging for people. I don't blame them. Most kids of a specific age aren't too creative when fed a question for a state test. For example, ask them who is a public figure they admire and why, and you're likely to get the bulk of the answers focusing on just a few people (athletes, popular music stars, etc.). For the written assessments, 10% of the student materials were scored twice (by separate people) to ensure accuracy of grades and as a way to identify issues with potential scorers. I've tried to refrain from too much commentary, but there is no doubt that the materials developed for tests are beaten down throughout the process by bureaucracy and various interests. It's much like the corporate world when the firm has way too many meetings in the course of developing something and there is a leadership vacuum. Oh, sure, there is a person or two who is technically leading things and may have veto power, but there are far too many diverse interests for anything of distinct quality to emerge. With one of the states for which my employer did work, a woman like the teacher in the link would be invited to participate in the following year's development. The lead state administrator always referred to this as "getting that person's buy-in." And truthfully, it seemed to work because the teachers brought in for this reason felt like they had a voice in the process. None that I saw seemed to appreciate the depth of the whole process, so they all seemed to think they had made a difference in the development of the tests. More specific to the author of the link, she seems like she's probably a good teacher, better than most. The education system, especially when it comes to statewide assessments, isn't prepared to appreciably handle outliers like her. She probably knows that. She probably knows the real battle to change these kinds of tests is not one she's prepared to tackle. I don't blame her. Nor do I blame her for making a public critique like she did.

fleitz 15y ago

This kind of stuff is the backbone of the public education system. John Taylor Gatto outlines very well the six lessons every student is taught. I think this fits well with lesson 5: In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers. Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

sbmassey 15y ago

Education is one of the things that democratic states should not get involved in: there is a troubling feedback loop when a state whose claim to legitimacy is the votes of it's citizens gets involved in activities which determine what those votes will be, and education is just such an activity: for the same reason that there shouldn't be government newspapers or television stations, there shouldn't be government educators.

cafard 15y ago

"ou can compose a “Gettysburg Address” for the 21st century on the apportioned lines in your test booklet, but if you’ve provided only one fact from the text you read in preparation, then you will earn only half credit. In your constructed response—no matter how well written, correct, intelligent, noble, beautiful, and meaningful it is—if you’ve not collected any specific facts from the provided readings (even if you happen to know more information about the chosen topic than the readings provide), then you will get a zero." I of course wrote Gettysburg addresses routinely in 8th grade English. No doubt the reporters at the Washington Post did, too, which is why I've sometimes had to read a story two or three times to find out who did what to whom. Creativity, ain't it great? Having said that, I think that the mania for measurement does have little to do with actual instruction.

methoddk 15y ago

She's 100% right. Standardized testing is a disease to the education in this country. The grade school system in this country is nothing but a babysitting program for people who aren't old enough to vote.

ryanoneill 15y ago

"There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. ... Because the owners of this country don't want that. ... They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. ... They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run their machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept ..." -- George Carlin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GseyaEibb_4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GseyaEibb_4

chernevik 15y ago

The author claims that these stupid and clumsy tests are of "a force that wants you ignorant and pliable, and that needs you able to fill in the boxes and follow instructions". If we're going to believe in some malign conspiracy hindering the public schools, wouldn't we look for it first in those institutions determining what does and doesn't happen in those schools? If we compare those institutions' stated purposes with their interests and actual behaviors, would we find them self-consistent? admirable? What would happen to their influence if that analysis were performed more deeply and frequently? And if we imagined the tools of such a force, what would they be? Control over the language of debate, insistence on particular assumptions, a particular orthodoxy of procedure and calculation, prohibition of certain questions as unnecessary or beside the point? Would such a force be honest about its aims and methods? Or would it seek to obscure them, and claim some different, more popular aims? We might begin looking for this malign 'fungus' by noting these tests were instituted to establish some accountability. Why exactly was that? And why were these obviously lousy tools chosen -- what alternatives were discussed, and why were they rejected? Yes, I can very well imagine a force, answering that description, wishing to limit the critical faculties produced by our public schools. I can imagine it very well indeed.

ScottBurson 15y ago

Could a voucher system really be worse than this? It would put all the control back in the hands of the parents. Some would misuse it; we know this. But we have the Internet now. Surely a Yelp-equivalent for voucher schools would quickly identify the good and bad schools. Competition would ensue. Would it be perfect? No. Some parents would prefer religious indoctrination to actual education. Others simply wouldn't care. But perfection is not the correct standard. What we have now is dismal and getting worse.

thisisnotmyname 15y ago
How exactly do vouchers solve the problem of poorly written standardized tests?
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  By junking the entire system we have now. The poorly written standardized tests are just a symptom of a system in which many people, with various interests, have a say in what and how children are to be educated. The result is education by committee -- exactly what the OP is complaining about. A voucher system would render the educational bureaucracy superfluous. Parents who thought their kids were being poorly served could move them to a different school, or start their own school if nothing else were available. This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Some parents home-school now. There already exists a small industry providing them with educational materials. I know, this is a radical idea. It hasn't caught on in the 20 or so years since it was first seriously floated -- why would it now? But meanwhile the quality of our kids' education continues to spiral downward. I think the only possible solutions will be radical ones.

warmfuzzykitten 15y ago

Putting aside for the moment that favorite punching bag - standardized tests - I question the rather overwrought tone of the piece, beginning with the title: 'A Test You Need to Fail'. This doesn't seem particularly good advice for students, nor does applauding the kinds of test answers she cites. Anyone should know that a response like "I don't think it applies to either one" with no supporting argument to exhibit the slightest knowledge of the subject would, even must, receive zero credit, with a "SAY WHY!!" scribbled in red in the margin. Students are very good at holding facile opinions out of ignorance, and should not be praised for it. Yes, a good teacher can spin a response like that to gold in the classroom, by eliciting the threads of actual knowledge upon which the opinion hangs, but a test can hardly do so. I can understand a teacher lamenting that she didn't know and pass on to her students that test graders would be looking for facts and not opinions, but it's not the test's fault she didn't. It is hardly "criminal" that standardized tests are designed to be objectively gradable. If the questions are poorly designed - which other commenters seem to have assumed, even though no evidence for it is presented here - isn't that more likely to be the result of mediocrity than of malevolence? I was likewise unconvinced by her citation of Noam Chomsky's remark. However much or little one considers Chomsky a "great man", one thing he is not is an expert on elementary/secondary education. He has opinions, like the rest of us. Why not cite the opinions of Jonas Salk or Stephen Sondheim? Chomsky can, however, be counted upon to state his opinions in stark, emotionally charged language, and a bit of this polemical propensity seems to have rubbed off on the (ex-)teacher.

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bluekeybox 15y ago
I hate to sound McCarthyan, but if a teacher recommends her students to fail tests while also name-dropping Chomsky and referring to him as "the great man" in the same text, her ulterior goal can be hardly anything other than subversion of capitalistic system. Sometimes things are more black-and-white than we are willing to believe.

grannyg00se 15y ago

I'm definitely not for standardized testing, and I think grade school is more about subsidized daycare than effective learning. But the letter is a little bit extreme when suggesting failure of the test. Any sufficiently intelligent child will be able to express their individuality and creativity outside of that particular testing environment. While writing the test, you can choose to recognize what it is, and supply the formulaic answers expected to do well. Then forget about it and continue being creative an excellent in your other endeavours. There are many scenarios in life where you are expected to follow a procedure. The procedure may not be ideal, and it may even be completely counterproductive. But you jump through the hoops, and apply yourself to the expected outcome of the procedure if you want to succeed. If I were advising my child I would tell them it's nonsense, the adults messed it up, but try to do well anyway given the rules and expected answers. Playing along can be an important skill. To be used judiciously.

bluekeybox 15y ago

I stopped reading when she mentioned "the great man" Chomsky.

sreyemhtes 15y ago

It's truly disgusting what has become of education in the United States. I know many teachers and all of them are outstanding people and I trust them fully. Yet it is the system that seems determined to hinder them at every corner.

mumrah 15y ago

As I recall the written portion of AP science exams was like this. No prose necessary - you could just write a bullet list of the required facts and get full credit