Posted on 08/13/2011 2:03:43 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Standardized tests in English and math taken by students in New York State are about to become slightly less tricky.
Beginning next spring, a new company, Pearson, will write the standardized tests that the Education Department gives to nearly all third through eighth graders. The department switched to Pearson this year after its contract with another company, CTB/McGraw-Hill, expired.
The department has advised the new company that catch-all answer choices known for tripping up students, like “none of the above” and “all of the above” and already rare in the state’s tests, are now banned.
Mirroring a national trend toward clearer multiple-choice questions, the use of the word “not” to confuse students is also off the table; negatives can be used only when necessary, the contract states. That makes it far less likely that students will confront head-spinners like: “Which of the following words can not be used to describe the tone of this passage?”
The details of what the tests will contain, and may not contain, are included in the $32 million, five-year contract the state issued this year. Tests written by CTB/McGraw-Hill came under criticism in recent years because researchers found that over time, the questions had become too predictable, leading proficiency rates to rise well above those on the national gold-standard, the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The state made the tests harder to pass in 2010, and scores plunged. The new contract is more expensive — with $8 million in spending next year alone; the CTB/McGraw-Hill contract totaled $26 million over eight years. But it offers much more detail, a review of the contracts shows. Responding to complaints from teachers that even small things were confusing students, officials even specify the font — the clear, sans serif Highlights Helvetica — that must be used.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The real problem with standardized tests is that they produce politically incorrect results.
They need to boost the scores, so they are making the tests easier. Nothing new.
Truer words never spoken.
Boom. That's it. You simply nailed it.
I would say that the real problem is using multiple choice "tests" in the first place: the answer is already provided.
Pose a problem, expect an essay solution: THAT is a test.
Mirroring a national trend toward clearer multiple-choice questions, the use of the word “not” to confuse students is also off the table"
After a few years in the NYS public schools, most students are incapable of understanding concepts like “all of the above” or the word not. They are also incapable of critical thinking thinking, reading comprehension and simple math.
All they can do is parrot simple phrases which they don't even understand.
The purpose of this testing is not to measure the level of student achievement. The purpose is to give incompetent, lazy teachers something to brag about. There is widespread cheating on all standardized tests but even this isn't enough. They have to dumb down the tests as much as possible.
Just as a dishonest merchant hates an honest scale, teachers hate honest tests.
You are right—an essay test will show if the student has a real understanding of the subject. But think of the logistics. Who is to read/evaluate all of those essays?
In Missouri we have the MAP test that originally was very heavy on extended answer/essay type questions. As I understand it, it took several days to train the readers to always give the same score to a student’s answer. Test booklets were digitized and the images sent to the scorers. Each answer had to be graded twice with with the same score— if they differed, it had to be read by a third judge for a final score.
All of this, of course didn’t come cheap. Last year, the essay portion was eliminated from the “Communication Arts” (that’s English for most of us) part of the MAP test for budget reasons. It is all multiple choice now.
This is all about getting more students to pass the tests. Nothing more.
And banning the use of ‘all of the above’ or ‘none of the above’ is silly. If an item discriminates that’s all that counts. In other words, if high performing students answer the item correctly and the non-performing students don’t, it’s a good item no matter how much the student, the parents, and the ‘community leaders’ whine.
Essay questions are a whole other story. Logistically they are a nightmare and they are unreliable. Many students cannot even begin to write a sentence. Producing a coherent series of sentences is beyond the ability of many.
I see all these efforts to "dumb down" testing and have to ask myself: how did we survive testing? Why are we treating the next generations as if they're less clever than ourselves?
You need to build these linguistic skills, build powers of observation, build reading comprehension just to cut through the B.S. coming from politicians, particularly those who are lawyers in any party!
“Which of the following words can not be used to describe the tone of this passage?”
The contraction "cannot" is perfectly acceptable and could help the more careless young readers while still keeping such questions in exams.
In all my years I don't recall many complaints about "All of the above" and "None of the above" questions.
"True or False" and "analogies" (i.e. Bush:Elephant::Obama:_ a.k.a. "Bush is to Elephant as Obama is to what?") are probably banned from these standardized tests and were the biggest causes for consternation among test takers in my experience.
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