Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

huffpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 464 posts

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

#231

Post by pvaldes »

btilly wrote: post #214
jtms wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am sorry that your experience was so terrible, but the plural of anecdote is not data. For a counter-anecdote, my experience of gifted programs is that it was the first place where I wasn't bullied for being more interested in books than sports. This didn't help me fit in with other kids my own age, but it did wonders for my self-confidence and significantly improved my odds of having a decent life. My wife's exper…

> the plural of anecdote is not data.

... and the definition of experience is not anecdote.

I think that 2 years of experience qualify as data. Anecdote is when you walk in a street and slip casually in a banana skin once.

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

#232

Post by jodrellblank »

gumby wrote: post #71
massivecali wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an art show once. I walked up to a couple debating what a hand in my painting was holding. It wasn't holding anything in my creation. But art, like writing, is subjective.

But you see it was your own blindness that caused you not to realize what the hand was holding, though your subconscious expressed it. Of course you can't see this! Yes I am being sarcastic but I actually heard this kind of comment about my then wife's work.

"I made the blue/gold dress, and I intended it to be blue, so everyone who sees it as gold is ___" what?

What are you saying about the people who make such comments about your then wife's work? Something demeaning, I infer.

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

#233

Post by V-2 »

philips wrote: post #54

Former US poet laureate Billy Collins wrote a poem about this sort of thing: The Effort Would anyone care to join me in flicking a few pebbles in the direction of teachers who are fond of asking the question: "What is the poet trying to say?" as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts— inarticulate wretches that they were, biting their pens and staring out the window f…

I found it at http://jatodd.pbworks.com/f/The+Effort-Billy+Collins.pdf and I got a strange delight out of the irony seeing it dissected (on page 2) :)

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

#234

Post by sametmax »

I always though how silly it was for teachers to pretend they got the correct answer in a text analysis of a century old author. Apparently it's even true for authors that are still alive.

Some things seemed so far fetched, so random, so made up. And yet it was supposed to be _the_ right answer. When I offered another one, even knowing the official one but disagreeing, I was graded as failing.

Hell, I'm pretty certain most writers just wrote something, and never though about it more. Not all of them are pondering, rewriting every line. And even the ones that do don't necessarily do it for the result the teacher expects.

And as a kid, you certainly can't say a classic author is not interesting. You can't say the text is boring, that you don't see talent in it, that you didn't learn anything from it. It has been validated by society, hence it's good. Now you have to say why you think it is, even if you don't. Actually you have to say what you know what the status quo is, which means repeating something you read elsewhere instead of forming a opinion from that and what you think. The opposite of what's school is supposed to teach.

We wonder why fake news and bullshit work ? It's because we teach kids to repeat popular opinions and make up things because they look good. We teach them that not only there is a price to pay for not doing that, but that we are ok with being the ones making them pay it.

People that felt like that usually went the science road. It's not a bad thing, but it's a positive feedback loop. It means fields in desperate needs of honesty and pragmatism are only welcoming bullshiters and conformists.

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

#235

Post by grandmczeb »

rocqua wrote: post #225
grandmczeb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always had a similar feeling. In classes where I knew the subject well, I generally did well on the tests. In classes where I had gaps in my understanding, I usually did poorly. In classes where the grades were posted publicly, my general subjective judgment of how well people knew the material matched up with their scores. Not perfectly, obviously, but the correlation has been high enough that I’ve never really…

There might be a really strong correlation, but the deviations from that correlation might not be totally random. That is, there might be people who consistently test above or below their skill level. This creates some weird imbalances that are far from fair. It would be a lot more acceptable if deviation of test scores from skill were to be totally random for every test.

I can understand biases in a specific test (e.g. cultural biases), but those can (and should!) be corrected with better design and specific accommodations. Do you think that testing as a general method of evaluation is biased though? Because the objection I typically see isn't "we need better test design" it's "there's a component of student ability that cannot be measured by a test".

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

#236

Post by AstralStorm »

Ensorceled wrote: post #209
_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…

That's weird that she was expected to study for it, sounds like it was just testing if she was "ahead of grade level". So yeah, doing it wrong. When my step kids were tested they were interviewed by a psychologist for a couple of hours and did various IQ and aptitude tests. The report was quite thorough.

I mean, you could have a separate "prep test" which is an entirely different purpose and would have to be really super secret on questions and answers including timing.

Essentially, this checks if you bribed the right people to have the answers for previous tests or even this one, connections and decent enough memory.

Welcome to America's latest educational scam.

A test to gauge progress is supposed to be almost fully secret and unpredictable to not bias for people cramming previous answers.

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

#238

Post by AstralStorm »

atian wrote: post #134
_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.

There are somewhat few notable people from MENSA... It is not a great standard for giftedness, more of a smart people club. People who do things are more often than not either too busy to join this club or see no point in it.

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

#239

Post by mola »

gumby wrote: post #71
massivecali wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an art show once. I walked up to a couple debating what a hand in my painting was holding. It wasn't holding anything in my creation. But art, like writing, is subjective.

But you see it was your own blindness that caused you not to realize what the hand was holding, though your subconscious expressed it. Of course you can't see this! Yes I am being sarcastic but I actually heard this kind of comment about my then wife's work.

As engineers we usually have a direct conscious intention for the details of our creation. Art doesn't work that way. The art piece is a piece of the artist and her surroundings. Including her conscious intentions, the naturalized social norms, her deep subconscious urges and desires, And with today's commoditized art, it includes the preferences of the collective unconscious. Literary analysis have plenty to work with. Diminishing art to the artist intentions does injustice to culture.

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

#240

Post by AstralStorm »

Veen wrote: post #145

High school literary criticism is just training for basic interpretation skills. It doesn't matter what's really "in" the poem, just that the student is capable of rudimentary analysis of meaning and symbolism and so on. If they went on to study literary criticism at a higher level with a decent teacher, they'd have to justify their interpretations with reference to the work as a whole, the writer's other work, their…

This means it is worthless for a multiple choice test and should be a write-up with argumentation. A miniature dissertation.

Like, say, maturity exam is here in Poland. They're a pain to grade, have to be very careful guidelines and alert examiners.

Post reply on HN