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I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

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Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#131

Post by Chunklight »

m0zg wrote: post #103
legohead wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read Crime and Punishment for the first time recently. found it quite boring and with limited meaning. but I am a 40 year old man and understood the concepts the book was introducing a long time ago. I feel like with the advent of the internet, shocking concepts/ideas are hard to come by. I'm sure ideas in the book were provocative "back then," but nowadays, not so much. I even watched some lectures on youtube disc…

That's probably because you've read it in English. For the life of me I don't get why non-Russian people read Russian classical literature. Just don't. It is true that there aren't really any Western authors of the same stature as Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, but really, you aren't really reading what they wrote. Their work requires quite a bit of thought, and that thought requires quite a bit built-in stuff that a native…

A bilingual friend of mine says Russian literature is better in French translation than English.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#132

Post by btrask »

lisper wrote: post #94
leggomylibro wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once asked a co-worker what they liked about poetry. "It's like reading a short story, but the author has less time to make their point." That was a fun place to work.

My own effort, written when I was in high school: A poem is a thought that tried In vain, just once, before it died To reach the page's right-hand side

    Past the right margin a poem may poke,
    With the help of HN's mighty block-quote.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#133

Post by pandapower2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #127
sytelus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the value of gifted programs. All parents innately want their child to be "gifted" but they don't understand what this program really means. They basically just accelerate by full grade or two while raising the expectations for each kid to another level. This is unnecessary burden on kids with a high risk that they can lose confidence or even burn out at tender age not willing to learn anything any more. I th…

> They basically just accelerate by full grade or two while raising the expectations for each kid to another level. That's...not accurate. Gifted programs tend to increase the degree of personalization more than anything. Yes, most people who qualify for gifted programs at probably going to end up targeting at least a full grade up in each core curriculum area, but the programs don't do a straight bump. > This is unn…

I was part of two programs. First from ages about 8 to 12 then another from age 13 to 15.

The program from 8-12 was what you described. Lots of random subject areas. Programming, history, chess, I learned how to build a mud brick hut (built a scale model and everything). Lots of self direction.

The program from 13 to 15 wasn't like that. It was more of a straight bump. We approximately did 2 years worth of core curriculum in one year and were then a year ahead for the remainder.

Unfortunately then at age 16 I and everyone else from that program re-entered the regular classrooms and had to do much of the same year's material again. It was really, really stupid.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#134

Post by atian »

_7fvc wrote: post #107

This article is fun to read. Incidentally, my daughter just took a test for a gifted program. She didn't study for it as recommended by our school district. She scored 95% in one subject. But the qualified cut-off rate is 98%! My eyes just rolled looking at that number. That means they only pick 98 and 99 percentiles. For a first grader to score that high, she needs to answer the exam perfectly. If you have some stat…

Many school gifted programs follow Mensa requirement of top 2 percentile. I'm not sure the % score was mapped directly to the questions answered correctly.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#136

Post by usgroup »

dragonwriter wrote: post #123
_7fvc wrote: post #107

This article is fun to read. Incidentally, my daughter just took a test for a gifted program. She didn't study for it as recommended by our school district. She scored 95% in one subject. But the qualified cut-off rate is 98%! My eyes just rolled looking at that number. That means they only pick 98 and 99 percentiles. For a first grader to score that high, she needs to answer the exam perfectly. If you have some stat…

> She scored 95% in one subject. But the qualified cut-off rate is 98%! > My eyes just rolled looking at that number. That means they only pick 98 and 99 percentiles. Either one of these is wrong, or they somehow managed to craft a test where the score percentage matches the score percentile, which while possible to engineer is somewhat improbable and also contradicts the next sentence: > For a first grader to score…

If the optimisation problem is “pick a set of kids that can finish the curriculum quicker as measured by standardised tests” then any effective screening test is likely to select for “test taking prodigies” since that is the leading measure.

RE percentage vs percentile: I think you may be wrong here. Take for example, uni exams. 40% is the pass mark here in old Blighty. The exams are standardised and the 40% threshold is not a percentile. In fact, it makes almost no sense at all to stackrank every cohort of test takers. It wouldn’t be fair at all not comparable over time. I think the parent poster is correct. Doubtless the empirical distribution of real scores are used to decide cutoffs for grades, by 99% in the parents posts very likely refers to a percentage.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#137

Post by gozzoo »

_7fvc wrote: post #107

This article is fun to read. Incidentally, my daughter just took a test for a gifted program. She didn't study for it as recommended by our school district. She scored 95% in one subject. But the qualified cut-off rate is 98%! My eyes just rolled looking at that number. That means they only pick 98 and 99 percentiles. For a first grader to score that high, she needs to answer the exam perfectly. If you have some stat…

98% sounds a lit like overfitting

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#138

Post by rdiddly »

RealityVoid wrote: post #105
oska wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really hard to "measure knowledge" And the idea of doing so is a fairly recent (and I would say toxic) invention. The concept of graded tests, marks and class grades (A, B, C etc) are all only a bit more than 100 years old. They're a product of the industrialisation of schooling.

They are a product of industrialization! But here is what's the nagging thought on my mind. This industrialized schooling has allowed basic human knowledge to be disseminated at a faster pace than ever before. The need to do so caused it to roll back on quality, sometimes greatly. But without this tradeoff, would knowledge be able to reach so many? Is there some sort of balance point to be reached? I agree that curre…

That's an interesting point - sacrificing quality for quantity. You see it in so many fields. Like agriculture. Back in the day, every farm was 100% organic. But just try feeding today's population that way. Now you pay a premium for organic. So in some sense maybe education is no different. Just doing more with less, or rather, doing less, for more people.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#139

Post by jtms »

_7fvc wrote: post #107

This article is fun to read. Incidentally, my daughter just took a test for a gifted program. She didn't study for it as recommended by our school district. She scored 95% in one subject. But the qualified cut-off rate is 98%! My eyes just rolled looking at that number. That means they only pick 98 and 99 percentiles. For a first grader to score that high, she needs to answer the exam perfectly. If you have some stat…

I was in the gifted program when I was in elementary school and I don’t recommend it. It took a kid like me who was already prone to social isolation and isolated him further. I voluntarily left the program after 2 years and was playing catch up socially and I wasn’t any better off academically. Don’t put your kids in that program.

Re: I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

#140

Post by Veen »

colechristensen wrote: post #89
gatherhunterer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literary analysis is overly criticized due to poor teaching of humanities. I disagree with some of the interpretations that I have heard of major literary works but no one has ever forced those ideas on me, I have never been censured for proposing an interpretation that differs from another. Bad teaching is a shame but dismissing an entire academic field because you had a poor experience as a child is self-aggrandize…

The people producing art and the people talking about what it means are so very often are mutually exclusive that it is very hard to take the people talking about it seriously. My experience with literary analysis is being forced to analyze pieces which I often believed didn't have any abstract meaning to speak of and then inventing some nonsense I thought would appeal to the teacher. The criticism is apt because my…

My experience of programming is making a turtle move around on a screen, so programming is dumb. My experience of math is working out how fast trains traveling towards each other are going, so math is dumb. My experience of chemistry is making a bit of paper change color when dipped in vinegar, so chemistry is dumb. And so on ad nauseam.
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