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I still don't understand why standardized testing gets so much pushback. Having the students do their work in a controlled environment is the obvious solution

I still don't understand why standardized testing gets so much pushback. Having the students do their work in a controlled environment is the obvious solution to AI and many other problems related to academic integrity. Its also the only way that students can actually be held to the same standards. When I was a freshman in college with a 3.4 highschool GPA, I was absolutely gobsmacked by how many kids with perfect >= 4.0 GPAs couldn't pass the simple algebra test that the university administered to all undergraduates as a prerequisite for taking any advanced mathematics course.

Viliam1234 11mo ago
> I still don't understand why standardized testing gets so much pushback. Parents of the children who can't pass the standardized tests also get a vote.
hamdingers 11mo ago
> I still don't understand why standardized testing gets so much pushback. Goodhart's law.
- bmacho 11mo ago
  Nah. Goodhart's law is literally just "if you play a matrix game don't announce your pick in advance". It is not a real law, or not different from common sense. (By matrix game I mean what wiki calls "Normal form game[0]", e.g. rock-paper-scissors or prisoner's dilemma.) In education, regarding exams, Goodhart's law just means that you should randomize your test questions instead of telling the students the questions before the exam. Have a wide set of questions, randomize them. The only way for students to pass is to learn the material. A randomized standardized test is not more susceptible to Goodhart's law than a randomized personal test. The latter however has many additional problems. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal-form_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal-form_game
  - jerf 11mo ago
    That's not even remotely true. A randomized standardized test will still have some domain that it chooses its questions from and that domain will be perfectly susceptible to Goodhart's Law. It is already the case that no one is literally teaching "On the SAT you're going to get this problem about triangle similarity and the answer is C." When a fresh batch of students sits down in front of some year's SATs the test is still effectively "randomized" relative to the education they received. But that randomization is relative to a rigid standardized curriculum and the teaching was absolutely Goodhart'd relative to that curriculum. "The only way for students to pass is to learn the material." Part of Goodhart's law in this context is precisely that it overdetermines "the material" and there is no way around this. I wish Goodhart's law was as easy to dodge as you think it is, but it isn't.
  - hamdingers 11mo ago
    I do not believe schooling is purely an exercise in knowledge transfer, especially grade school. School needs to provide opportunities to practice applying important skills like empathy, tenacity, self-regulation, creativity, patience, collaboration, critical thinking, and others that cannot be assessed using a multiple choice quiz taken in silence. When funding is tied to performance on trivia, all of the above suffers.
  - jwiz 11mo ago
    They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores And they predictin' prison population by who scoring the lowest
    - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
      For those who are out of the loop: Run The Jewels - Walking In The Snow > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-M15L4BTqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-M15L4BTqI > https://genius.com/Run-the-jewels-walking-in-the-snow-lyrics https://genius.com/Run-the-jewels-walking-in-the-snow-lyrics
calgoo 11mo ago
Well, for one thing, people learn differently and comparing a "standard" test result just measures how much crap someone has been able to cram into their brain. I compare it to people memorizing trivia for Jeopardy. Instead what needs to be tested and taught is critical thinking. Yes a general idea of history and others is important, but again its teaching people to think about those subject, not just memorizing a bunch of dates that will be forgotten the day after the test.
- anthonypasq 11mo ago
  you cannot possibly do any higher level of analysis of any subject if you dont even know the base facts. its the equivalent of saying you dont need to know your times tables to do physics. Like, theoretically its possible to look up 4x6 every time you need to do arithmetic but why would you not just memorize it. If you dont even know that the american civil war ended in 1865 how could you do any meaningful analysis on its downstream implications or causes and its relationship to other events.
  - SoftTalker 11mo ago
    More important than knowing what 4x6 is, is understanding what multiplication is, why division is really the same operation, understanding commutative, associative, distributive properties of operations, etc. All of this comes as a result of repeated drilling of multiplication problem sets. Once this has been assimilated, you can move on to more abstract concepts that build on that foundation, and at that point sure you can use a calculator to work out the product of two integers as a convenience.
    - contrast 11mo ago
      How is knowing the commutative properties of operations more significant than being able to do basic arithmetic? I'd imagine millions if not billions of people have found basic math useful without ever learning what "commutative" even means.
      - 11mo ago

Viliam1234 11mo ago

> I still don't understand why standardized testing gets so much pushback. Parents of the children who can't pass the standardized tests also get a vote.

hamdingers 11mo ago

> I still don't understand why standardized testing gets so much pushback. Goodhart's law.

bmacho 11mo ago
Nah. Goodhart's law is literally just "if you play a matrix game don't announce your pick in advance". It is not a real law, or not different from common sense. (By matrix game I mean what wiki calls "Normal form game[0]", e.g. rock-paper-scissors or prisoner's dilemma.) In education, regarding exams, Goodhart's law just means that you should randomize your test questions instead of telling the students the questions before the exam. Have a wide set of questions, randomize them. The only way for students to pass is to learn the material. A randomized standardized test is not more susceptible to Goodhart's law than a randomized personal test. The latter however has many additional problems. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal-form_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal-form_game
- jerf 11mo ago
  That's not even remotely true. A randomized standardized test will still have some domain that it chooses its questions from and that domain will be perfectly susceptible to Goodhart's Law. It is already the case that no one is literally teaching "On the SAT you're going to get this problem about triangle similarity and the answer is C." When a fresh batch of students sits down in front of some year's SATs the test is still effectively "randomized" relative to the education they received. But that randomization is relative to a rigid standardized curriculum and the teaching was absolutely Goodhart'd relative to that curriculum. "The only way for students to pass is to learn the material." Part of Goodhart's law in this context is precisely that it overdetermines "the material" and there is no way around this. I wish Goodhart's law was as easy to dodge as you think it is, but it isn't.
- hamdingers 11mo ago
  I do not believe schooling is purely an exercise in knowledge transfer, especially grade school. School needs to provide opportunities to practice applying important skills like empathy, tenacity, self-regulation, creativity, patience, collaboration, critical thinking, and others that cannot be assessed using a multiple choice quiz taken in silence. When funding is tied to performance on trivia, all of the above suffers.
- jwiz 11mo ago
  They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores And they predictin' prison population by who scoring the lowest
  - aleph_minus_one 11mo ago
    For those who are out of the loop: Run The Jewels - Walking In The Snow > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-M15L4BTqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-M15L4BTqI > https://genius.com/Run-the-jewels-walking-in-the-snow-lyrics https://genius.com/Run-the-jewels-walking-in-the-snow-lyrics

calgoo 11mo ago

Well, for one thing, people learn differently and comparing a "standard" test result just measures how much crap someone has been able to cram into their brain. I compare it to people memorizing trivia for Jeopardy. Instead what needs to be tested and taught is critical thinking. Yes a general idea of history and others is important, but again its teaching people to think about those subject, not just memorizing a bunch of dates that will be forgotten the day after the test.

anthonypasq 11mo ago
you cannot possibly do any higher level of analysis of any subject if you dont even know the base facts. its the equivalent of saying you dont need to know your times tables to do physics. Like, theoretically its possible to look up 4x6 every time you need to do arithmetic but why would you not just memorize it. If you dont even know that the american civil war ended in 1865 how could you do any meaningful analysis on its downstream implications or causes and its relationship to other events.
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  More important than knowing what 4x6 is, is understanding what multiplication is, why division is really the same operation, understanding commutative, associative, distributive properties of operations, etc. All of this comes as a result of repeated drilling of multiplication problem sets. Once this has been assimilated, you can move on to more abstract concepts that build on that foundation, and at that point sure you can use a calculator to work out the product of two integers as a convenience.
  - contrast 11mo ago
    How is knowing the commutative properties of operations more significant than being able to do basic arithmetic? I'd imagine millions if not billions of people have found basic math useful without ever learning what "commutative" even means.
    - 11mo ago