7 ms·

The vagueness is seen as a feature, not a bug. The kid is supposed to read between the lines and find out what the problems are really about. That's straight h

The vagueness is seen as a feature, not a bug. The kid is supposed to read between the lines and find out what the problems are really about. That's straight how my teachers would explain it to us, and you see that line of thinking in the "problem solving" bits where the text is intentionally made harder to decrypt. Reading skills and shared background assessments are baked into most math tests, even if that's not the focus of it.

junofan 3y ago
I’m thankful I was doing competition math by that age and had access to more rigorous materials than these “readiness” assessments.
whoopdedo 3y ago
Which is a big problem I have with these sort of tests. A problem that exists in most I.Q.-like assessments. Rather than evaluating how well the student is able to use their brain it's instead filtering those who were coached to think the same way as the test writers. That creates homogenity which is why I believe there are cultural divides in test results. Like the Cold War era stories where spies use seemingly innocuous or nonsensical code phrases to identify each other. "The sparrow flies at midnight. Calculate the velocity it would need to reach Berlin in 7 days."
kuroguro 3y ago
I think vagueness is kindof ok in math/physics questions - if you think about it there's usually and interpretation that makes more sense, but I doubt most of them are made that way on purpose. Where I really hate to see it is humanities e.g. psychology tests/surveys - if after reading a question I immediately think of 3 different interpretations I just think it's a bad test. And if I spend any more time thinking about it I get almost nowhere.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  > there's usually an interpretation that makes more sense Yes, I see it as "background" part, or "common sense" perhaps. I's funny when for instance you have grocery questions about little Jimmy having 3 bags with 4 buns in each, so how many sausages does he need to make hotdogs with all the buns ? That's cute and straightforward as long as you know what a hotdog is, which is common sense for the question writer. I don't think that's something that needs to be (or can be) changed, as long as school and exams are seen as a formative step, and not a single chance you'll have to make a decent living. Kids in the later group will have a hard time either way.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    > That's cute and straightforward as long as you know what a hotdog is, which is common sense for the question writer. Even if you don’t know what a hotdog is, it’s indicated you use sausages and buns to make them. The most straightforward method of doing that would lead to the correct answer. There may be kids that figure that’s too simple and assume they need two or three sausages per bun, but those will be the minority.
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      Most sandwiches are made with two pieces of bread. Buns happen to be two-pieces-in-one, which isn't disclosed in the question. Somebody who has passing familiarity with sandwiches but not hotdogs or buns specifically might think it takes two buns to make one hot dog. Thankfully I think most questions usually aren't like this. Cultural loading in questions is a popular excuse for discrepancies in testing outcomes but those discrepancies have a nasty tendency to persist even when tests are redesigned. Usually there's something else going on which causes the outcome discrepancies, particularly bad parenting.
mhh__ 3y ago
Practically I think that just means that the kids end up getting taught vast quantities of "exam technique" rather than content. I taught myself the essence of calculus when I was 14 or 15 - there were holes in my knowledge but it took I'd estimate 5 years for regular education to catch up to the intuition I built then (on a houseboat on the Thames even, sounds romantic except for the fumes)
- refulgentis 3y ago
  I was homeschooled through 6th grade, entering regular school, it was striking just how "slow" everything seemed. Conversely, I struggled immensely for a year and a half, once my 3 year lead on material ran out. The difference in quality and speed in something you're self-motivated to do and are doing at your own pace, versus something you're being told to do at someone else's pace, even with the same person in both cases, is quite astounding. Or maybe that's the viewpoint of someone with ADD, and most people can keep steady progress _and_ lead balanced lives. I'll never really know.
  - dev_hugepages 3y ago
    I don't think you're alone, i have the same "issue"
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Yes. Kids moving countries hit that wall at full speed, and have to learn the exam system and quirks on top of the actual content. The interesting aspect to me was how they need to take a step back and look at it as a set of made up conventions, when they might have just absorbed it as universal truth otherwise.
- atoav 3y ago
  Depends on the kid. Don't you think? For some the repetition is the only chance they get to find a pattern. I think where "traditional" education truly sucks tho (unless you are blessed with a gifted teacher), is giving you an overwiew of how the pieces fit together and what is behind each of them.
irjustin 3y ago
This has been a huge contention point of Common Core and why so many kids had such huge problems with the overall test. Hard questions that seem/potentially-are vague, but are hard questions first. Personally, I'm a big fan of what Gates was attempting to do, but I have teachers in my family who couldn't get rid of Common Core from their schools fast enough. Debates with them were never good and me, not being an operator, wouldn't dare tell them how to do their jobs. But, I understand difficult, standardized testing isn't a good answer, but really how do you get a whole nation to up-skill?
- csense 3y ago
  De-centralize and de-nationalize schooling. It's clear the feds have no idea how to make the education system work. Let the states have ~50 different curricula, or individual schools to have ~hundreds or ~thousands of different curricula. Even if they're bad on average, some of them will probably figure out how to make an actually good US school by sheer luck. Once we have that, the others have a model to copy.
  - kemotep 3y ago
    I haven’t been in public school in 15 years but there was 2 public school districts, a public-private magnet school associated with the State University and a Private Catholic school with radically different curriculum in my hometown. Even between the two high schools in the same district there was different courses and funding because of the property taxes funding specific schools and one school was on the nice side of town. As far as I understand, most public schools are decentralized, at least the State level, if not further. Are you claiming that is not the case currently?
  - irjustin 3y ago
    > De-centralize and de-nationalize schooling. It's clear the feds have no idea how to make the education system work. Let the states have ~50 different curricula, or individual schools to have ~hundreds or ~thousands of different curricula. Even if they're bad on average, some of them will probably figure out how to make an actually good US school by sheer luck. Once we have that, the others have a model to copy. Sadly, we already know what works, individualized/custom attention that exposes the kid to a lot of fields. A worse way to put it, more money == better education. And this is largely true even if specifically wrong. But once you try to scale that up, everything falls apart.
dr_kiszonka 3y ago
I always found that "feature" annoying because students who knew the material well could fail questions testing its mastery due to imprecise instructions. (My personal pet peeve is not making it clear whether "or" is inclusive or exclusive.)
- hahajk 3y ago
  I can't think of a situation in which "or" would ever be used in an exclusive sense unless it was explicitly called out as an XOR or included "but not both".
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    "Is it A or B?" "Do you want the burger or the ribs?"
monkeydreams 3y ago
> The vagueness is seen as a feature, not a bug. The kid is supposed to read between the lines and find out what the problems are really about. Pity the poor child who is capable of thinking both inductively and reductively. Such lax testing standards reminds me of the story of the WWII cryptographer in Cryptonomicon who is asked to work out how long a ship would take to travel down the river, comes up with a new theory of fluid dynamics, and flunks the test.

junofan 3y ago

I’m thankful I was doing competition math by that age and had access to more rigorous materials than these “readiness” assessments.

whoopdedo 3y ago

Which is a big problem I have with these sort of tests. A problem that exists in most I.Q.-like assessments. Rather than evaluating how well the student is able to use their brain it's instead filtering those who were coached to think the same way as the test writers. That creates homogenity which is why I believe there are cultural divides in test results. Like the Cold War era stories where spies use seemingly innocuous or nonsensical code phrases to identify each other. "The sparrow flies at midnight. Calculate the velocity it would need to reach Berlin in 7 days."

kuroguro 3y ago

I think vagueness is kindof ok in math/physics questions - if you think about it there's usually and interpretation that makes more sense, but I doubt most of them are made that way on purpose. Where I really hate to see it is humanities e.g. psychology tests/surveys - if after reading a question I immediately think of 3 different interpretations I just think it's a bad test. And if I spend any more time thinking about it I get almost nowhere.

makeitdouble 3y ago
> there's usually an interpretation that makes more sense Yes, I see it as "background" part, or "common sense" perhaps. I's funny when for instance you have grocery questions about little Jimmy having 3 bags with 4 buns in each, so how many sausages does he need to make hotdogs with all the buns ? That's cute and straightforward as long as you know what a hotdog is, which is common sense for the question writer. I don't think that's something that needs to be (or can be) changed, as long as school and exams are seen as a formative step, and not a single chance you'll have to make a decent living. Kids in the later group will have a hard time either way.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  > That's cute and straightforward as long as you know what a hotdog is, which is common sense for the question writer. Even if you don’t know what a hotdog is, it’s indicated you use sausages and buns to make them. The most straightforward method of doing that would lead to the correct answer. There may be kids that figure that’s too simple and assume they need two or three sausages per bun, but those will be the minority.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Most sandwiches are made with two pieces of bread. Buns happen to be two-pieces-in-one, which isn't disclosed in the question. Somebody who has passing familiarity with sandwiches but not hotdogs or buns specifically might think it takes two buns to make one hot dog. Thankfully I think most questions usually aren't like this. Cultural loading in questions is a popular excuse for discrepancies in testing outcomes but those discrepancies have a nasty tendency to persist even when tests are redesigned. Usually there's something else going on which causes the outcome discrepancies, particularly bad parenting.

mhh__ 3y ago

Practically I think that just means that the kids end up getting taught vast quantities of "exam technique" rather than content. I taught myself the essence of calculus when I was 14 or 15 - there were holes in my knowledge but it took I'd estimate 5 years for regular education to catch up to the intuition I built then (on a houseboat on the Thames even, sounds romantic except for the fumes)

refulgentis 3y ago
I was homeschooled through 6th grade, entering regular school, it was striking just how "slow" everything seemed. Conversely, I struggled immensely for a year and a half, once my 3 year lead on material ran out. The difference in quality and speed in something you're self-motivated to do and are doing at your own pace, versus something you're being told to do at someone else's pace, even with the same person in both cases, is quite astounding. Or maybe that's the viewpoint of someone with ADD, and most people can keep steady progress _and_ lead balanced lives. I'll never really know.
- dev_hugepages 3y ago
  I don't think you're alone, i have the same "issue"
makeitdouble 3y ago
Yes. Kids moving countries hit that wall at full speed, and have to learn the exam system and quirks on top of the actual content. The interesting aspect to me was how they need to take a step back and look at it as a set of made up conventions, when they might have just absorbed it as universal truth otherwise.
atoav 3y ago
Depends on the kid. Don't you think? For some the repetition is the only chance they get to find a pattern. I think where "traditional" education truly sucks tho (unless you are blessed with a gifted teacher), is giving you an overwiew of how the pieces fit together and what is behind each of them.

irjustin 3y ago

This has been a huge contention point of Common Core and why so many kids had such huge problems with the overall test. Hard questions that seem/potentially-are vague, but are hard questions first. Personally, I'm a big fan of what Gates was attempting to do, but I have teachers in my family who couldn't get rid of Common Core from their schools fast enough. Debates with them were never good and me, not being an operator, wouldn't dare tell them how to do their jobs. But, I understand difficult, standardized testing isn't a good answer, but really how do you get a whole nation to up-skill?

csense 3y ago
De-centralize and de-nationalize schooling. It's clear the feds have no idea how to make the education system work. Let the states have ~50 different curricula, or individual schools to have ~hundreds or ~thousands of different curricula. Even if they're bad on average, some of them will probably figure out how to make an actually good US school by sheer luck. Once we have that, the others have a model to copy.
- kemotep 3y ago
  I haven’t been in public school in 15 years but there was 2 public school districts, a public-private magnet school associated with the State University and a Private Catholic school with radically different curriculum in my hometown. Even between the two high schools in the same district there was different courses and funding because of the property taxes funding specific schools and one school was on the nice side of town. As far as I understand, most public schools are decentralized, at least the State level, if not further. Are you claiming that is not the case currently?
- irjustin 3y ago
  > De-centralize and de-nationalize schooling. It's clear the feds have no idea how to make the education system work. Let the states have ~50 different curricula, or individual schools to have ~hundreds or ~thousands of different curricula. Even if they're bad on average, some of them will probably figure out how to make an actually good US school by sheer luck. Once we have that, the others have a model to copy. Sadly, we already know what works, individualized/custom attention that exposes the kid to a lot of fields. A worse way to put it, more money == better education. And this is largely true even if specifically wrong. But once you try to scale that up, everything falls apart.

dr_kiszonka 3y ago

I always found that "feature" annoying because students who knew the material well could fail questions testing its mastery due to imprecise instructions. (My personal pet peeve is not making it clear whether "or" is inclusive or exclusive.)

hahajk 3y ago
I can't think of a situation in which "or" would ever be used in an exclusive sense unless it was explicitly called out as an XOR or included "but not both".
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  "Is it A or B?" "Do you want the burger or the ribs?"

monkeydreams 3y ago

> The vagueness is seen as a feature, not a bug. The kid is supposed to read between the lines and find out what the problems are really about. Pity the poor child who is capable of thinking both inductively and reductively. Such lax testing standards reminds me of the story of the WWII cryptographer in Cryptonomicon who is asked to work out how long a ship would take to travel down the river, comes up with a new theory of fluid dynamics, and flunks the test.