5 Votes
Utility of Standardized Testing
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Are standardized tests really providing value in quantifying a student’s academic ability or future potential? A Florida board of education member was curious about that very question so he arranged to take the FCAT himself to identify with the students on both its validity and problems.
I won’t beat around the bush. The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a ‘D,’ and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.
It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate. I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities…
It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actuall y been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.
He managed to get only 17% of the questions right by guessing. It does make one wonder about the utility of such tests especially when they’re typically used to drive the racial/ethnic wedge into play about student ability and quality of teaching programs. A sampling of questions provided to fourth graders in the DC area is available via javascript through the Washington Post to see what these students are struggling so hard with.
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Huh? by Occams
I don’t see your reason to complain that he only scored 17 % correct on guesses. Correct guesses only distort the result. More than the odds of incorrect guesses indicate negative innate ability, or, a well designed test.
In my opinion the test can’t be that bad so I am suspicious. A dude with a real science degree and those other qualifications should have done better on a test designed for school kids. All this makes me wonder about is the quality of his university education and of his management information systems at work.
Perhaps he really is a dumb bastard who does well in business and academia because he is spoon fed or manipulated.
He should not be a member of a state board of education.
Further Cultural Evidence Towards Education by VnutZ
A recent study debunks the myth that gender gaps in math exist from biology (pdf) but are instead cultural. That seems apropos to the latter part of the discussion that culture plays a large part in the educational gap present in the DC area.