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I saw this earlier today, and thought, "Boy, we've come a long way from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills that I took every couple of years back in the 60s/70s." (Does anyone else remember those??)
I found myself wondering just how common some of the stuff in this video is. Do lots of schools actually have these "rah-rah sessions" to get kids excited about the standardized test? Surely it's not common for someone who has been making A's in school to fail the test (like that tearful girl at the microphone), or for a grown man with multiple Master's degrees to score poorly on it....is it??? And what in the world was up with the moral of that weird story about the pineapple?!
I don't remember testing being a big deal back when I was in school. I thought they were kind of fun actually. Are the tests longer, more frequent, more stressful now?....or have the adults made such a big deal out of them that it causes the kids to be upset about them?
Edited to add: I certainly didn't know until recent news reports that opting out of standardized testing was an option!! I'm curious how teachers feel about that?
I saw this earlier today, and thought, "Boy, we've come a long way from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills that I took every couple of years back in the 60s/70s." (Does anyone else remember those??)
I found myself wondering just how common some of the stuff in this video is. Do lots of schools actually have these "rah-rah sessions" to get kids excited about the standardized test? Surely it's not common for someone who has been making A's in school to fail the test (like that tearful girl at the microphone), or for a grown man with multiple Master's degrees to score poorly on it....is it??? And what in the world was up with the moral of that weird story about the pineapple?!
I don't remember testing being a big deal back when I was in school. I thought they were kind of fun actually. Are the tests longer, more frequent, more stressful now?....or have the adults made such a big deal out of them that it causes the kids to be upset about them?
Edited to add: I certainly didn't know until recent news reports that opting out of standardized testing was an option!! I'm curious how teachers feel about that?
Yes they do. Over the past couple of years the trend started.
Now they have tshirts made, pseudo test pep rallies, banners with slogans.
Almost takes on a festival like appearance.
"Pumped up for STAAR", "You're the STAAR", "Soar to the STAARs" are various school slogans in Texas where our standardized test is called STAAR.
It's all test taking motivational activities the week or two before the test.
The crying girl may have been the smartest kid in a class full of the not too bright. Then when she is measured against other kids she finds that she isn't all that bright herself. We have all seen kids with good grades in one school and then they move and are below average for the new school. I have had teachers tell me about the inner city kids that moves to a suburban district and the grades plummet. That is why I am in favor of standardized tests. They probably do need fixed in some places but they should be used.
The crying girl may have been the smartest kid in a class full of the not too bright. Then when she is measured against other kids she finds that she isn't all that bright herself. We have all seen kids with good grades in one school and then they move and are below average for the new school. I have had teachers tell me about the inner city kids that moves to a suburban district and the grades plummet. That is why I am in favor of standardized tests. They probably do need fixed in some places but they should be used.
Have you actually seen these tests? I can see why the brightest kids don't do well. They are written to be ambiguous on purpose, mainly to those with higher-level thinking skills. The 5th grade test prep papers that came home with my daughter last year were written either very poorly or very well, depending on what the goal was. On most of the questions, I could see two possible answers, but only one was going to be marked correct. By "dumbing down" my thinking, I could generally pick the one that the test-makers were looking for. Other times, any random kid's guess would be as good as mine.
I think there's a problem when an educated and successful adult is not, in fact, going to score as "smarter than a fifth grader" on a standardized test.
The crying girl may have been the smartest kid in a class full of the not too bright. Then when she is measured against other kids she finds that she isn't all that bright herself. We have all seen kids with good grades in one school and then they move and are below average for the new school. I have had teachers tell me about the inner city kids that moves to a suburban district and the grades plummet. That is why I am in favor of standardized tests. They probably do need fixed in some places but they should be used.
So you assume that tests are GOOD just because they are STANDARDIZED?
I think we should have standardized tests. But the kinds of questions on the tests should be public especially after it has been used. Math problems can be changed just by altering the values of the variable. Computers could even make random changes so no two kids get the same problem.
I saw this earlier today, and thought, "Boy, we've come a long way from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills that I took every couple of years back in the 60s/70s." (Does anyone else remember those??)
I found myself wondering just how common some of the stuff in this video is. Do lots of schools actually have these "rah-rah sessions" to get kids excited about the standardized test? Surely it's not common for someone who has been making A's in school to fail the test (like that tearful girl at the microphone), or for a grown man with multiple Master's degrees to score poorly on it....is it??? And what in the world was up with the moral of that weird story about the pineapple?!
I don't remember testing being a big deal back when I was in school. I thought they were kind of fun actually. Are the tests longer, more frequent, more stressful now?....or have the adults made such a big deal out of them that it causes the kids to be upset about them?
?
Yes, the rah-rah sessions are a big deal now. They spend a good couple weeks prior to the test getting the kids psyched up for them. That's after spending the rest of the year teaching to them. Testing wasn't as big a deal way back then. I had four my high school career in the 70s. The PSAT, the ASVAB, the SAT, and ACT. Then consider back then only those going to college took the SAT, and the only reason I took the ACT was one of the colleges I applied too required the ACT math section. Finally, yes the tests are longer, more frequent, more stressful and more stupid now than back then. It is possible to know too much or overthink them.
The basic concept is a "question" with four possible answers. The answers typically are written as one wrong answer, two distractors that could possibly be "right" and the "right answer. The distractors are specifically intended to fool the student into picking them, supposedly with the idea that a better student won't pick them. Well the big problem often is, the "right" answer isn't really truly right either. Rather there is the obvious "wrong" answer and three possible "right" answers, depending on how the person who wrote the question interpreted certain words vs how you interpret the same words. An example might be: 2+2 = X. Choose the most correct answer: a: 3 b: 3.999 c: x d: 4.1 Ok, now you know that 2+2 = 4, but none of those are the choice, so which answer is the one the test wants? OK, silly example, but it illustrates the point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thinkalot
The crying girl may have been the smartest kid in a class full of the not too bright. Then when she is measured against other kids she finds that she isn't all that bright herself. We have all seen kids with good grades in one school and then they move and are below average for the new school. I have had teachers tell me about the inner city kids that moves to a suburban district and the grades plummet. That is why I am in favor of standardized tests. They probably do need fixed in some places but they should be used.
And that's exactly the problem, in spite of the contradictory data (class grades) your immediate assumption is the standardized test is correct and other data is wrong. What do you base that assumption on? The word "standardized?" Or the fact they are pushed so strongly? I am a physicist and test engineer by profession. In that world we never draw conclusions from one data point. Yet that is what standardized tests attempt to do -- reduce an entire year or even an entire school history into a single, one time, one method, data point.
The basic concept is a "question" with four possible answers. The answers typically are written as one wrong answer, two distractors that could possibly be "right" and the "right answer. The distractors are specifically intended to fool the student into picking them, supposedly with the idea that a better student won't pick them. Well the big problem often is, the "right" answer isn't really truly right either. Rather there is the obvious "wrong" answer and three possible "right" answers, depending on how the person who wrote the question interpreted certain words vs how you interpret the same words. An example might be: 2+2 = X. Choose the most correct answer: a: 3 b: 3.999 c: x d: 4.1 Ok, now you know that 2+2 = 4, but none of those are the choice, so which answer is the one the test wants? OK, silly example, but it illustrates the point.
Yes, I completely agree with this. And sometimes they're completely nonsensical. I'm trying to think of an example... One that I remember the gist of went like this:
Mrs. Smith was asking the people in her neighborhood how many televisions they had. The numbers were given as: 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 0, 5, 10, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2. Which method of estimation is more valuable to her: Mean, median, or mode?
I mean, what on earth kind of question is that? My child said, is she a person who sells televisions? Or does she work for the electric company, or is she just a nosy neighbor?
I have no idea what they were even looking for, though they probably wasted plenty of time in class going over these types of absurd scenarios, as well as how to determine the "right" answer.
I think that those in favor of the standardized tests as they are right now should probably take a look at the actual tests, if possible (which it really isn't, because they're not accessible to parents). As for us, our kids are no longer in public schools, so it's not an issue any longer.
The crying girl may have been the smartest kid in a class full of the not too bright. Then when she is measured against other kids she finds that she isn't all that bright herself. We have all seen kids with good grades in one school and then they move and are below average for the new school. I have had teachers tell me about the inner city kids that moves to a suburban district and the grades plummet. That is why I am in favor of standardized tests. They probably do need fixed in some places but they should be used.
She a classmate of yours?
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Or does she work for the electric company, or is she just a nosy neighbor? 
