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Public school is to serve the public. We should organize it in such a way that rich and poor alike are offered the same level of service regardless of what race, religion, etc... they are and especially not how much money they have. It is not about "equality" - you are making that up. No one said ever that "everyone" can become a nobel-prize mathematician or whatever. But the child of a black custodian who immigrated from Kenya in 2002 or the child of a white millionaire doctor whose family immigrated from London in 1655 should be offered the same opportunity by the public education system as well as every other service that is for the public.
When we look at the sociological stats - we see that those opportunities are not equal, and that family wealth is the best indicator of success. Standardized tests are one of the inequities that we can easily get rid of and be none the worse for it. They do not test for anything useful anyway. All they measure is performance on the test.
Teacher-written tests do not test for anything useful either. All they measure is who was randomly assigned to an easy teacher vs who was randomly assigned to a hard teacher.
Public school is to serve the public. We should organize it in such a way that rich and poor alike are offered the same level of service regardless of what race, religion, etc... they are and especially not how much money they have. It is not about "equality" - you are making that up. No one said ever that "everyone" can become a nobel-prize mathematician or whatever. But the child of a black custodian who immigrated from Kenya in 2002 or the child of a white millionaire doctor whose family immigrated from London in 1655 should be offered the same opportunity by the public education system as well as every other service that is for the public.
When we look at the sociological stats - we see that those opportunities are not equal, and that family wealth is the best indicator of success. Standardized tests are one of the inequities that we can easily get rid of and be none the worse for it. They do not test for anything useful anyway. All they measure is performance on the test.
Disagree. Speaking more for the ones used in college admissions: They are a good rough indicator of innate intelligence and the ability of the student to succeed in college. Especially for the more selective colleges, and the more difficult programs.
They are less useful if you’re trying to discern minor differences in a few points that may be gained by taking prep classes, or multiple tests. In which case, I would measure the gap and factor it into the total score during the admissions process.
But don’t throw out the standardized test unless you replace it with an equal tool.
For K-12 public schools, they are an unfortunate necessary evil, but should be pared to bare necessity so as not to negatively impact student learning.
The only objective part of most standardized tests is scoring, when done by an accurately programmed machine. Deciding what items to include on the test, how questions are worded, which answers are scored as "correct,” how the test is administered, and the uses of exam results are all made by subjective human beings.
Most test-makers review items for obvious biases, such as offensive words. But many forms of bias are not superficial. Test-makers also use statistical bias-reduction techniques. However, these cannot detect underlying bias in the test's form or content. As a result, biased cultural assumptions built into the test as a whole often are not removed by test-makers.
So pro-test makers aren't able to generate unbiased tests but individual teachers are able to do so?
Narrowing vocabulary for example in order to produce a test more culturally palatable for certain groups is biased and racist in yield.
In other words stylizing tests per local test taking cadres simply reduces academic rigor. The soft racism of reduced expectations indeed.
The only objective part of most standardized tests is scoring, when done by an accurately programmed machine. Deciding what items to include on the test, how questions are worded, which answers are scored as "correct,” how the test is administered, and the uses of exam results are all made by subjective human beings.
Most test-makers review items for obvious biases, such as offensive words. But many forms of bias are not superficial. Test-makers also use statistical bias-reduction techniques. However, these cannot detect underlying bias in the test's form or content. As a result, biased cultural assumptions built into the test as a whole often are not removed by test-makers.
None of that is subjective. It's all standardized and unbiased. There is no "cultural bias" or cultural questions in standardized testing. That is why East Asian tend to score slightly higher than white Westerners. Would you say the tests have a East Asian cultural bias? Of course not, so some other false excuse will be claimed.
Why is it that, especially on this forum, people seem so opposed to standardized tests, especially the SAT? Standardized tests are the only thing that judges everybody based on a common yardstick. Even within the same school, different teachers grade very differently. When I point that out, I’m just told that “life isn’t fair”. So, why aren’t kids who underperform on standardized tests told that “life isn’t fair”, just like students who get stuck with hard teachers are told? Or, if standardized tests are truly unfair, and if something needs to be done about it, why isn’t there also an attempt to make grading more uniform between teachers?
Nobody wants to admit their kid is dumb or lazy............standardized testing shows that!
So pro-test makers aren't able to generate unbiased tests but individual teachers are able to do so?
Narrowing vocabulary for example in order to produce a test more culturally palatable for certain groups is biased and racist in yield.
In other words stylizing tests per local test taking cadres simply reduces academic rigor. The soft racism of reduced expectations indeed.
Neither do.
The problem with *pro test makers* is that they still have to determine what to include and what to leave out and there is no objective way to do that.
An example for preschool
The children were then shown four pictures and asked what went with the tea cup and were shown pictures of a saucer, a truck, a bunch of flowers, and a pot. As we looked at the test, knowing that the answer that got the most points was the saucer, we immediately decided not this test. Why? Most of the kids at our school did not have saucers in their homes. Their parents drank out of the cups. In some of he homes that cup would have been used to dip soup out of a pot. In other homes, because these were no vases, that cup may have been used to hold flowers. No one could come up for a to match the truck with the cup but we readily saw ways our children could have used any one of the other three answers. They would have probably identifies the saucer as a small plate.
The most infamous SAT problem with bias was on the analogy section (which has been eliminated)
Here it is:
Runner is to Marathon as
envoy is to embassy
martyr is to massacre
oarsman is to regatta
horse is to stable
The correct answer is (C) oarsman : regatta.
At issue is the fact that the correct answer requires the knowledge of vocabulary words that are more likely to have come up in the daily lives of affluent white students than in the lives of less affluent minority students. This test question was famously dissected in the controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray.
Approximately 53% of white students chose C, but only 22% of African Americans chose C.
The problem with *pro test makers* is that they still have to determine what to include and what to leave out and there is no objective way to do that.
An example for preschool
The children were then shown four pictures and asked what went with the tea cup and were shown pictures of a saucer, a truck, a bunch of flowers, and a pot. As we looked at the test, knowing that the answer that got the most points was the saucer, we immediately decided not this test. Why? Most of the kids at our school did not have saucers in their homes. Their parents drank out of the cups. In some of he homes that cup would have been used to dip soup out of a pot. In other homes, because these were no vases, that cup may have been used to hold flowers. No one could come up for a to match the truck with the cup but we readily saw ways our children could have used any one of the other three answers. They would have probably identifies the saucer as a small plate.
The most infamous SAT problem with bias was on the analogy section (which has been eliminated)
Here it is:
Runner is to Marathon as
envoy is to embassy
martyr is to massacre
oarsman is to regatta
horse is to stable
The correct answer is (C) oarsman : regatta.
At issue is the fact that the correct answer requires the knowledge of vocabulary words that are more likely to have come up in the daily lives of affluent white students than in the lives of less affluent minority students. This test question was famously dissected in the controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray.
Approximately 53% of white students chose C, but only 22% of African Americans chose C.
That's hogwash really even in those examples. The real reason a student would get the correct answer is (C) oarsman: regatta is by understanding the question to begin with and eliminating the other more obvious wrong answers. The reason a student gets an answer right isn't necessarily because they're affluent or poor, but they are more well read and intelligent.
That's hogwash really even in those examples. The real reason a student would get the correct answer is (C) oarsman: regatta is by understanding the question to begin with and eliminating the other more obvious wrong answers. The reason a student gets an answer right isn't necessarily because they're affluent or poor, but they are more well read and intelligent.
A lot of “best guess” answering used by those unfamiliar with specific cultural references, even among the native born (e.g. regatta) involves looking for patterns then using deduction to pick the best answer among those offered.
The purpose of the test is to assess one's working English vocabulary, not to assess how well one uses the vocabulary of one's own narrow environment. Regatta is absolutely a valid English word. It's not one of the most common words, so if you know its meaning, you've got a wider than average command of English vocabulary. Removing "regatta" from a test intended to determine how wide one's vocabulary is just as silly as removing "heifer" on the grounds that students may be from the city, or removing "trolley" on the grounds that students may be from the country. If you remove from a vocabulary test all words that have a specialized application and that some students may not have been directly exposed to, what you end up with is the 850 words of Basic English - not a test of real English vocabulary.
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