Just asking

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• How to Get Your Girlfriend to Rant, by Joey deVilla.
  Seriously, standardized testing is something I know about, having been a long-term employee of The Princeton Review. Standardized testing just doesn't work, because the people who write the tests are not robots and therefore any standardized test is going to be inherently biased, and in the US the bias is generally towards white people who have a lot of money. Math word problems pose unfamiliar situations - which kid in a landlocked state is familiar with regattas? Vocabulary tests do the same thing. Kids whose first language isn't English lose out, massively, and bright ones are placed in remedial classes. The problem is that no one test can accurately gauge anything across the board except how well kids do on that particular test, and really, that isn't helpful to anyone. Now, I am speaking as a white girl who grew up in a family that had some money, and I spanked the SAT within an inch of its life. And without that score, I might not have gotten into the #4 liberal arts college in America, wahoo. But that doesn't mean that any test that is out there can accurately measure how smart I am. What if my teacher in third grade taught us something wrong about pronouns? Then my class was boned on the ERBs or whatever testing was done that year. There is no way to know what's going on with X kid, so standardized testing is always a false measurement in some way, big or small.

• The problem with standarized testing is multifold.
  Problem 1 is universality of the testing. Do you test all students, including special needs (special ed/english as a second language) students? If so, should those scores of the special needs students be counted against the schools scores?
  If you force those students to take the test, and count their scores, then schools that are magnets for such children end up receiving a worse grade than they deserve. It could also encourage schools to claim that they do not have the proper facilities to educate such children, which means that such children get *no* integration into a "regular" classroom. (Currently in the US special education students are integrated for one or two subjects into "regular" classrooms.)
  If you say that those children do not have to take the test, or that their scores will not be counted against the school average, then you may have a problem of schools pushing low achieving students into special needs classes, or not releasing ESL students into mainstream classrooms--all because they may bring down the average of the school.
  Problem 2 is teaching to the test. If *everything* is dependent upon how well a school does on one test, then the tendency is for teachers to teach to the test, which means that you may lose out on things that are not directly related to the test: students do work that is similar to what they will be tested upon, instead of work that may be more useful in the long run. (i.e. worsheets with problems similar to the test questions, instead of projects that actually apply the material.)
  As my knowledge is of the US educational system, I gave rather broad answers about standardized testing in general, since I don't know the specifics of Canadian standardized testing.
  I come from a family of teachers (one of whom was a Canadian great-grandmother, so I'm not *comepletely* off base), so I get to hear a lot of this, whether I want to or not.
  Michelle
  Random (but not really)

• Other issues with standardized tests:
  1) It doesn't tell you much that the teacher doesn't already know. There will be some really bad teachers who are totally clueless about which students are learning the material and which aren't (and some students who are very bright but unmotivated, who will score much better than the teacher expects). But, by and large, most teachers will be able to accurately predict the scores of most students. Time and energy spent preparing for the test, taking the test, and evaluating the results could all be better spent educating the students.
  2) If you really don't trust your teachers (which is what mandated standardized testing means) then testing once a year is pointless--it just tells you which students have had a year of their life wasted with the wrong teacher or in the wrong class. To be useful in spotting students who aren't learning, you'd really need to do standardized testing several times a year, so that there'd be time to intervene.
  3) It greatly reduces the flexibility of the teacher to focus on what seems to be working. Some classes are going to be excited about Shakespeare and others are going to be bored by it. A good teacher can shift the lesson plan to run the class either way--maybe taking the Shakespeare-hating class and teaching them essay-writing skills or Beat poets. The students still learn just as much "English," but they might do much better or worse on a "standardized" test that had a few more or fewerShakespeare questions than usual.

• Well, I seem to have hit a nerve here. I have responses, which I'll have to post later. I'm at work right now, where there exist certain quantitative criteria that must be met in order for me to continue receiving a paycheque.

• How to get your girlfriend's friends to rant, by Joey deVilla
  The Redhead's got it down. The other problem with standardized tests is that test prep companies(as in the Redhead's experience at TPR and my own 10-year stint at Kaplan) learn how they're written, and inflate peoples scores by teaching them not completely what's on the tests, but tricks to beat them as well(Kaplan spun these as "strategies." Let's face it, that's how people with C+ averages get into business school.
  Even I, who took only one Physics class the first time through college, have scored moderately well on the MCAT, based only on what I remember from HS Biology and Chemistry, and what I learned spouting Kaplan's BS for 10 years.
  Food for thought, I hope.

• One more issue with standard testing hit my Mother pretty hard. She taught grade 5 and 6 English as a Second Langauge. Her kids, regardless of their time in Canada, had to complete the same test and we expected to hit the same numbers as native english speakers.
  I know that's not a general problem, it's more of a policy issue, but nevertheless it's related.
  Tyler (forgot my login)

• Criteria like "the quantity of time spent working shall be far greater than zero"?

• Re: Teaching to the test.
  To further complicate the issue, here are two issues being raised here in Washington regarding the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) test.
  The first is that this test is being used as part of the federal No Child Left Behind program that Dubya is so fond of. It boils down to this: state and federal funding is dependent upon the WASL scores. It's seen as a way to make the school accountable for the academic success of their students, which is a great theory but it comes at a cost, particularly for schools already hit by budget cuts. And, trust me, a school that cuts its arts program to make ends meet is not going to reinstate it the instant they're back in the black.
  Besides, don't you want your kid to go to the school that's ranked #1 in 4th Grade aptitude?
  The second problem is that, ultimately, the numbers are meaningless. This past spring the state lowered the scores required to pass. This just blows my mind. If this were an engineering experiment, if this was a crash test, you would not change the test in order to ensure that the product passes muster. And yet...
  I just watch dumbfounded.
  Chris
  Click Tracks

• Not only that but almost every student in Washington is required to take the test. Just moved to the country? Don't speak a lick of English? Doesn't matter! Take the test! IEPed Special Ed student with a 1.0 reading level? Sorry, you get to take the (three week long, makes you feel really stupid) test too.
  Since the WASL is a standards based test, kids who miss the cut off for passing by even one point, fail that section of the test. Then, the only information given to teachers and families is the numerical score. We never get to see which test items our students did poorly on so we could improve instruction and help students succeed in the future.
  Finally, the scores are then published in the papers. God forbid the school has a high student turn over rate, or poverty level (ora high number of special needs or beginning english language learner kids). Those things aren't taken into account.
  Decisions about schools, teachers and students are being made based on this test. This test that is costing Washington millions of dollars, is changed in some way every year (making year to year comparisons impossible!) and is worthless as far as driving instruction.
  I agree that schools should have higher standards and that students should be tested. Currently my district has a test that is given in the fall and spring that shows student's growth. It lets parents, teachers and students see which areas the student has made progress in and which areas the student needs more help in. It's a great way to test kids and it is being discontinued because of the WASL.

• standardized testing good.
  Imagine if we took the "all students are special in their own way" approach to evaluating driving tests or medical board exams, airline pilots or bridge engineers?
  Testing shouldn't be thought of as a one shot deal. It would be better to think of it as feedback as opposed to a final evaluation. If you score badly there are areas you need to go back and work on and then you take the test again later. The test just shows where you are now, not tomorrow after a little more practice. There is almost always a tomorrow when it comes to failing a test but less so when you take those skill out in the world.
  Both Joey and I would probably be destitute panhandlers if we were tossed out of academia for failing more than one time and thinking it was the end of everything as opposed to feedback saying we needed to drink and write for newspapers a little less and attend classes a little more. At least he would have the accordion thing to fall back on. Me, I would be probably just yelling at the dirty sock puppet on my hand.
  Failure is also a fact of life. Seeing that the sun still comes up after one is an important learning experience. Shielding people by giving them soft testing just prolongs the inevitable and makes it harder for them to cope when it does happen. It also increase the chances that it happens on something bigger in life that is harder to rebound from.
  Also when you screw with the feedback a person becomes unable to make informed decisions about what they should be doing. There are people out there that should never pursue math or writing or in my case, singing. Giving people milktoast generic feedback about their abilities is the equivalent of giving them career beer goggles.
  Joey is a friend, so when we were in that bar that fateful night and I saw the girl looking at him and his accordion in an interesting, but not interested way, I gave him good feedback, which in that case was none. And I encouraged everybody at the table to do likewise. When Wendy looked at him at his christmas party a while later, we gave everybody in the house good feedback, run! She's about to go through him like a bleach blond cougar through the side of a junior hockey team bus.
  If someone is bad at something, let them know. Then they can decide if they want get better at that thing or try something else instead.
  Take do it yourself investors, beginner self taught motorcycle riders, or those people who think they can fly by jumping off heights. A little unbiased feedback would have saved them a lot of pain later.
  Also a standardized test sets a known quantity. You know, kind of like a standardized side of the road to drive on, a standardized colour of traffic light to stop at, or a standardized test for the strength of metal holding your car together. For computer types how much do you enjoy all your different standards? Or for employers of computer programmers, how useful is it to have a known standard level of programming abilities?
  island airport bad. I first held the idea that people against it were a bunch of whiners and that for the area to grow economically we would need to let it grow. Then one day I was riding my bicycle along queen's quay and the wind was blowing in from the south. There was a turboprop plane spooling up its jets out on the island. Even from where I was the noise was higher than would be allowed in any industrial workplace without protection. I feel for any property owner along there, it would substantially change their quality of living. When these people bought their homes here it wasn't with intent of having window rattling ambient noise.
  The solution is fast public transit out to pearson from downtown a la most first world major cities. Also no major city in the world seems to be suffering from a lack of a downtown airport, ie: London, New York. Or even Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary, all of which have viable public transit servicing their airports. It would be interesting to see where all the flights come and go from the island airport anyway. It's not like you can fly toronto island / jfk direct. I am guessing that they are mostly private planes and small charters.
  just a sensitive earred, passed a few more courses than I failed kind of guy,
  Eldon