An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society • Hacker News Board

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#111

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:19 PM UTC

kyleschiller wrote: post #88

grandalf wrote: post #59

While standardized tests are criticized for rewarding general intelligence at the expense of other strengths, it seems that college admissions has been steadily devaluing general intelligence over the years. Correspondingly, the alphabet tests increasingly reward rote memorization, diligence, and repeated practice at the expense of general intelligence. When I was in college the most disturbing trend was students who…

Yeah, people with law degrees are probably overrepresented in politics, but pre-med?

Healthcare is one of the biggest areas of government, and administrators in the field often have medical and/or public health degrees on top of pre-med or substantially similar undergraduate coursework.

For that matter, I think that medical doctors are substantially overrepresented in elected general government office (state and federal legislatures, etc.) even though not nearly so much as lawyers. (e.g, Congress is 2.8% physicians, while the US adult population is around 0.4% physicians.)

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#112

Post by pnathan » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:22 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #28

bbctol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with the idea that there was a 'postmodern revolution' in education (or even what that would look like?) What changes are you referring to?

See "The Myth of the Postmodern University" .[1] What the above article is missing, however, is that "postmodernism" in English departments, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, etc, has been long been boogymen among right-wingers like David Horowitz,[2] who don't like criticism or questioning of the oppressive social systems they benefit from and take the position that where such criticism is dominant, conservative an…

Let's agree to agree that such criticism is within the intellectual purview of the university.

However, I posit that the essence of postmodernism is to deny objective claims to truth and virtue. Would you agree with that?

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#113

Post by pnathan » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

oculusthrift wrote: post #33

sidek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, current elite US college admissions seem to select for people who vote Democrat well enough. It would be hard to increase that percentage very much. Just look at the political affiliation reported by e.g. Harvard students. If anything, I would think that an institution which tested for wisdom might shift conservative a percentage point or two.[ Not because I think conservatives are necessarily more moral in…

liberals and academics have tended to pretend values or virtue don't really exist while following the principles themselves. they tend to heavily participate in their communities, get married, and have kids later and don't commit much crime. However, they absolutely refuse to acknowledge that these behaviors are virtues or that anyone else should behave that way. the only way they really enforce their concept of virt…

hi, academic liberal here.

I don't think I've never pretended virtue doesn't exist. And, to be frank, most of the liberal types I know, regardless of their (a)religion, believe there are virtues.

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#114

Post by pmoriarty » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

hyperdunc wrote: post #80

pmoriarty wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See "The Myth of the Postmodern University" .[1] What the above article is missing, however, is that "postmodernism" in English departments, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, etc, has been long been boogymen among right-wingers like David Horowitz,[2] who don't like criticism or questioning of the oppressive social systems they benefit from and take the position that where such criticism is dominant, conservative an…

Oppressive social systems? You mean like the capitalist patriarchy boogeyman? I'm all for questioning social systems because goodness knows the ones we have contain many problems. But the article you linked is from 2004 and out of date with regards to what is happening. Postmodernism in universities is moving into the social sciences and attempting to destroy the bedrock of modern Western civilization. It wouldn't be…

"Oppressive social systems? You mean like the capitalist patriarchy boogeyman?"

I mean things like racism, misogyny, colonialism, social inequality, and yes, even the oppressive aspects of capitalism -- which actually do exist, much as some would like to spin capitalism as an untarnished blessing on the world.

"But the article you linked is from 2004 and out of date with regards to what is happening. Postmodernism in universities is moving into the social sciences and attempting to destroy the bedrock of modern Western civilization."

What is the bedrock of Western civilization, pray tell? And how does what's happening in the social sciences threaten it?

"It wouldn't be so bad if proponents had something better to replace it with - but all they have is a labored version of Marxism that increases racism and segregation, and lowers meritocracy through identity politics. Social equity is the goal, but increased oppression will be the result."

This has been the line of the so-called conservatism with a smile, which pretends to care for the downtrodden, the oppressed, and minorities. That line might fool many today who have little familiarity with history, but is real stretch for those who've seen the conservative boot stomp down again and again on those they are now pretending to concern themselves with. No, conservatism has always been concerned primarily with protecting and advancing the interests of the rich and powerful, and there's no indication that they've suddenly turned a new leaf and suddenly love their historical victims.

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#115

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:40 PM UTC

SeeDave wrote: post #58

jbscpa wrote: post #15

My spouse is a classroom educator. Her school participates in Great Expectations program. http://www.greatexpectations.org/ It is a character development program "that provides teachers and administrators with the skills needed to create harmony and excitement within the school atmosphere" There are 8 Expectations at the elementary level 1. We will value one another as unique special individuals 2. We will not laugh…

>2. We will not laugh at or make fun of a person's mistakes nor use sarcasm or putdowns. I would have appreciated this as my public school experience was rife with negativity, sarcasm, snark, jeering, insulting, etc. I'm not sure what causes such anti-social behavior but I dream of a day where all students can be kind, considerate, polite, and supportive of one another.

[deleted]

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#116

Post by germinalphrase » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

kyleschiller wrote: post #93

germinalphrase wrote: post #90

We need reliable ways to measure student achievement, knowledge and skill level. If we're not satisfied with the cost and negative externalities of standardized testing, then IMO we should be seeking ways to make the assessments that teachers are using in their lessons more accurate and trustworthy. We're already paying people to do the work, but we just don't trust the results. That's the problem - so let's fix it.

Yeah, isn't this exactly what Sternberg is saying? It sounds like he's done a lot of work precisely on improving the assessments.

Sternberg is arguing that what the tests measure isn't desirable (but presumably the implementation of the tests would be the same/similar to current tests?).

I suppose my suggestion is a little off topic as I'm addressing some criticisms of standardized testing with respect to cost/relevance to desired learning outcomes/inability for use in guiding a student's learning or teacher's pedagogy/taking time away from primary learning for test prep/and so on.

We currently spend a little less than ~2 billion a year on standardized testing, but the problems inherent in the form/format of these tests isn't changing. I believe we could get better results for much less if we turn our attention to creating a way for teacher to implement trustworthy assessments in their own classrooms and lessons. Why pay third parties so much money to do something that already being done (but which needs to be improved to make it trustworthy).

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#117

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:48 PM UTC

oculusthrift wrote: post #33

sidek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, current elite US college admissions seem to select for people who vote Democrat well enough. It would be hard to increase that percentage very much. Just look at the political affiliation reported by e.g. Harvard students. If anything, I would think that an institution which tested for wisdom might shift conservative a percentage point or two.[ Not because I think conservatives are necessarily more moral in…

liberals and academics have tended to pretend values or virtue don't really exist while following the principles themselves. they tend to heavily participate in their communities, get married, and have kids later and don't commit much crime. However, they absolutely refuse to acknowledge that these behaviors are virtues or that anyone else should behave that way. the only way they really enforce their concept of virt…

> liberals and academics have tended to pretend values or virtue don't really exist

No, we liberals (academic or not) jusr disagree with conservatives (who tend to share values, again, whether academic or not) on some details of what good values are (and, equivalently, what constitutes virtue.)

Disagreeing with your values is not the same as pretending values don't exist.

> However, they absolutely refuse to acknowledge that these behaviors are virtues

I know of no liberals who would disagree with the idea that community involvement and not committing crime (provided just definitions of crime) are virtues.

Marriage is a different story, but then even many strands of socially conservative Christianity (such as traditional Catholic doctrine) don't view marriage as a general virtue, but rather as a virtue specifically for those with a vocation for it, a vocation which is no more inherently virtuous than that for either religious life, priesthood, or committed (lay) single life. It's true that liberals often see additional lifestyle choices as no less virtuous than these.

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#118

Post by oculusthrift » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:49 PM UTC

deepnotderp wrote: post #60

oculusthrift wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly it seems to me that many that bash them are just insecure they didn't do well and therefore claim that it isn't a valid measure.

Well it stands to reason that if a test isn't a valid measure then those who are hurt most by it will be the most vocal complainers. That doesn't invalidate what the complainers have to say. There are numerous studies showing the poor validity of these standardized tests.

depends what you mean by validity. they have been shown to strongly correlate with IQ.

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#119

Post by cperciva » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:50 PM UTC

pzh wrote: post #96

cheetos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew a classmate who openly admitted to putting made up volunteer activities on her college applications, arguing there was no chance the school would fact check her. She was right!

The problem with these is that they couldn't have been significant enough to make a dent in the outcome. Pretty much all significant achievements are fact-checkable. E.g. you may falsely claim that you were doing karate or basketball, but if you did win any trophies, then most selective schools wouldn't care about you.

You might be surprised. I was on the committee which adjudicated major entrance scholarships for six years, and I can count on my fingers the number of times someone said "can we get some verification of this?" We've never thought that fraud was a common problem, and when you're competing to recruit the top students you really don't want to go back to them and accuse them of dishonesty..

And (although we're revising the system and hopefully changing this part) the relative weighting of "significant achievements" of an easily fact-checked nature vs. "doing lots of stuff" has skewed heavily towards the latter; you could have a resume full of "volunteered at X" and "leader of student club Y" which would be worth as much as the difference between a 90% high school average and a 95% high school average, while containing nothing which would show up online or elicit commentary from a referee beyond "this student is heavily involved".

(We're putting together a new system starting next year which is aimed to be more about identifying students who are in some way exceptional as opposed to merely being generally all-round good people. A large part of the motivation for this is to avoid easily "gamed" metrics; nobody spends 15 years playing violin or becomes a national chess master simply because it will look good on their resume. So with luck we'll end up having less of a fact-checking problem in the future; but we're still going to have a significant amount of trust built into the system.)

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#120

Post by adjkant » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:51 PM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #82

Shivetya wrote: post #16

Look at the hundreds of billions of dollars the DOE has spent since its inception under President Carter and ask, why have scores and graduations rates not show real improvement? Why are we still asking the same questions we did back then? If there were one Federal agency in dire need of dissolution it is that one. Give the money to states in grants and see which one comes up with the better solution

What if your kid lives in one that comes up with the worst solution?

Agreed this is an important question. I think the second question is "is the worst solution significantly worse than what we have now?". I don't know the area well enough to take a stance here, but it seems the parent is claiming there is little to lose and lots to gain. So do you agree with that, particularly the little to lose part?