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

#131

Post by Bakary » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 11:46 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #119

pzh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Due to the volume of applicants and the rise in competitiveness, don't you end up being faced with a glut of exceptional candidates anyway? In which case the selection would still inevitably amount to a draw based on arbitrary criteria or simply the way committee members felt that day.

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

#132

Post by SeeDave » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 11:52 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #105

SeeDave wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of teachers being outright hostile to students is far too many, in my opinion. How does this behavior positively impact the lives of their students? Do they not understand the psychological damage they can be inflicting? Do they simply not care?

Adolescence is an exercise in accumulating scar tissue. What you call damage, I can argue is growing up. You need a thicker hide and a more independent source of self worth; reliable continual external validation inhibits, imo. Teachers are just other people too. The sooner teenagers recognise it fully, the better placed they'll be to choose their own way rather than have it chosen for them.

If it's done in a respectful, consensual manner then sure... there's nothing wrong with friendly harmless teasing. The problem is that it often crosses a line into bulling with zero net benefit for the victims.

Saying something like "What you call damage, I can argue is growing up" is a dangerous phrase; the type of dismissiveness that gives me the impression that you may have difficulty with respecting the boundaries of others. Could you please provide a couple of examples of the type of conversations/comments you've made that helped people build a thicker hide? Have you ever been thanked for it?

That said, adolescence is absolutely not an exercise in accumulating scar tissue so much as learning through trial and error how to interact with others, gain an education, and learn life skills to become a functioning member of society.

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

#133

Post by SeeDave » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 12:13 AM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #128

SeeDave wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

In my early teens, I was the only one who used sarcasm in the classroom, and none of my peers understood it. There needs to be more sarcasm in schools.

Why does there need to be more sarcasm in schools?

I'm willing to hear you out, but would appreciate it if you could clearly explain the benefits of increased sarcasm in schools.

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

#134

Post by mikeash » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 12:26 AM UTC

prewett wrote: post #103

Retric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many ways the trend if for the US over the last 200 years to become less ethical the more formally religious it is. (As measured by things like church attendance.) If you can site some counter evidence I would be interested in reading it.

Sounds like you have an axe to grind, especially since you cite no evidence yourself... How would you measure "less ethical," anyway? Are we more ethical now than 200 years ago or less, in your view? According to Gallup, 91% of Americans in 1948 claimed to be Christian, compared to 69% in 2016. [0] I would assume "formally religious" is tracks similarly. Personally, I think we are less ethical, but since I wasn't aro…

In what way was USA 1948 more ethical than USA 2016?

When I think of USA 1948, I think of things like Jim Crow, women requiring their husband's permission to open a bank account, interracial marriage being forbidden, homosexuals staying in the closet for fear of their lives, young men being forced into military service against their will, and lobotomy as standard psychiatric treatment.

But, you know, there's occasional swearing on TV now, so maybe it balances out.

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

#135

Post by newtem0 » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 12:44 AM UTC

I dropped in on a physics class at my uni and i was surprised at how poor the students understanding of physics was. These are super sharp people and they struggled with simple problems. Its because they learn in this testing way. They dont actually understand the material. Thats the most direct example of this problem that ive seen. In order to fully understand things like you ought to, you have to take the initiative yourseld on top of studying for tests that are often made arbitrarily hard with memorization and other things of that nature. Most of the college kids i know dont really know anything. And just like this article said, they are only good at gaming the system and advancing their own self interests. There is no big picture. They never wonder how they might be changing society and they never wonder how they might want to shape society. Even my 40 year old room mates dont. Its a death scentence for this country. An absolutely lethal development. I think the recent political developments are only the beginning of things to come due to this problem of apathy.

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

#136

Post by bittercynic » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 12:58 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #101

SeeDave wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to handle sarcasm and negativity is, in my opinion, to reduce contact and/or interaction. To not reward such behavior and instead choose to associate with positive people. The problem is that school-kids are forced into repeated, unsupervised interactions where they are often deliberately and persistently targeted by aggressors. Out of curiosity, what purpose does sarcasm serve you? What do you get out o…

It's stops people's egos getting too big, and keeps them grounded. Verbal play, attack and defence is also an education for more subtle interactions later in life. Like it or not, adult life is a sea of competition and words are weapons.

In some domains this is absolutely true. If you're lucky, you have options to explore outside of those domains.

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

#137

Post by accountyaccount » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

mmirate wrote: post #36

accountyaccount wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense considering the U.S. is a society where you have no value unless you work. The presiding political party doesn't think you should have food and housing unless you have a job.

> you have no value unless you work This subjunctive clause, stands alone as a true statement. How else does one earn money?

You're equating value with money. I wasn't.

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

#138

Post by nindalf » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:38 AM UTC

kyleschiller wrote: post #91

cperciva wrote: post #74

Standardized tests are a lousy way of deciding things. But at least they're better than non-standardized tests. At my university (SFU, in Canada) admission to most faculties is based on high school grades. That's grades awarded by high schools -- we used to have province-wide grade 12 exams, but for almost all subjects those were abolished a few years ago. It's widely recognized at the post-secondary level that a 90%…

Yeah, I don't think Sternberg is advocating for ending standardized testing: "My colleagues and I developed assessments for creativity, common sense and wisdom... we doubled prediction [accuracy] for academic performance, and with Kaleidoscope we could predict the quality of extracurricular performance, which the SAT doesn’t do." It sounds like he just wants to reform them, and has some strong initial results to sugg…

Any metric can be gamed. It only works until people figure out how.

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

#139

Post by dTal » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:56 AM UTC

SeeDave wrote: post #85

merpnderp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My school wasn't rife with it. Maybe only half my teachers used sarcasm, mockery and negativity towards students.

Half of teachers being outright hostile to students is far too many, in my opinion. How does this behavior positively impact the lives of their students? Do they not understand the psychological damage they can be inflicting? Do they simply not care?

I'm going to guess merpnderp was indulging in a little sarcasm of their own.

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

#140

Post by defen » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 2:01 AM UTC

Glyptodon wrote: post #57

So the 30 point IQ thing, is that a reference to a global increase driven by access to education, or am I missing something? Because it's not like 130 is the new normal IQ score? But at the same time haven't they always been normalized around 100 in industrialized countries?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect