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The End of Scantron Tests

theatlantic.com

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Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#11

Post by diogenes4 »

JasonFruit wrote: post #4
murphyslab wrote: post #3

> Soon, however, teachers and government officials sought ways to evaluate rapidly increasing numbers of students. In 1900, roughly 10 percent of teens attended high school; by 1940, some 70 percent did. It reminds me of looking at a 1930s census, not long ago, while compiling a family history. Some of the adults on a rural farm were listed as having completed "4th grade". It's rather difficult to imagine a world whe…

I wonder how much the actual average level of education has changed, though the topics may be different. Could those 4th-grade dropouts read and understand a newspaper, calculate how many pounds of barley it takes to plant the south field now that we cleared that new area, and work out a 1-in-10 slope for the new shed roof? I bet most of them could, and that a lot of the time the average person spends in school now i…

> i bet most of them could, and that a lot of the time the average person spends in school now is not as well-directed toward their likely life needs — which may be less easily ascertained.

Interesting to order it this way because, as the engine of meritocracy, education is supposed to determine life direction, not be reflective of it. Of course this isn't how people actually think of it, but we don't live in a meritocracy either now do we

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#12

Post by bl4kers »

> The SAT will go fully digital next year; the ACT, AP exams, and numerous state tests have already done so or will follow.

Future headline: teen hacker caught with stolen tests

Also might be a good attack vector for nation states. Could get assets into prestigious schools or publish anonymously online to cast doubt on the entire system

I've looked at the CollegeBoard's engineering job listings before and they were far below market rates. Wonder if they're adequately investing in their system's security

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#13

Post by callalex »

We are still forcing students to use the same shitty Texas Instruments calculators with horrible screens, unacceptably convoluted interfaces, and criminally slow performance and power consumption due to these same standards bodies. Technology has been better than that for more than 20 years now. We’ve gotten to the point where current students can use the calculator their grandparent bought as a child. How will moving the SAT from a bubble sheet to a laptop change any of the real factors that contribute to this problem?

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#14

Post by paulpauper »

"That model was more holistic than a multiple-choice test, but also prone to subjectivity and bias—and only possible, in part, because far fewer children received a formal education."

"If the epoch of multiple-choice tests is truly ending, the assessments won’t necessarily be missed. Not only is the format inherently reductive—bubble-in question-and-answer forms have also been prone to bias."

So all formats are biased.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#15

Post by paulpauper »

bl4kers wrote: post #12

> The SAT will go fully digital next year; the ACT, AP exams, and numerous state tests have already done so or will follow. Future headline: teen hacker caught with stolen tests Also might be a good attack vector for nation states. Could get assets into prestigious schools or publish anonymously online to cast doubt on the entire system I've looked at the CollegeBoard's engineering job listings before and they were f…

that's why credit score/agency and other finance sector companies have so many data leaks. not paying top dollar for top talent and just not a high priority.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#17

Post by gnicholas »

callalex wrote: post #13

We are still forcing students to use the same shitty Texas Instruments calculators with horrible screens, unacceptably convoluted interfaces, and criminally slow performance and power consumption due to these same standards bodies. Technology has been better than that for more than 20 years now. We’ve gotten to the point where current students can use the calculator their grandparent bought as a child. How will movin…

I've never thought about the power consumption of TI calculators. I had an 85 and I recall changing the batteries occasionally, but not very often. I also didn't find the performance speed to be a hindrance during HS, including on the SATs.

What did you use your calculator for that it was noticeably too slow for? How often did you have to replace batteries? I get that there are newer technologies out there, and perhaps it would be a genius startup idea to make a device that's just like a TI, but using modern chips.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#18

Post by gnicholas »

The worst thing about Scantron tests was when you skipped a problem and planned to come back later, but then forgot to leave it blank on the answer sheet. Then all of your answers were off by one, and you had to go back and erase/refill.

Some teachers would let you finish with the error intact, and then spend extra time (without the questions, just the answer sheet) shifting your answers down. But if it was a standardized test, no such luck!

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#19

Post by callalex »

gnicholas wrote: post #17
callalex wrote: post #13

We are still forcing students to use the same shitty Texas Instruments calculators with horrible screens, unacceptably convoluted interfaces, and criminally slow performance and power consumption due to these same standards bodies. Technology has been better than that for more than 20 years now. We’ve gotten to the point where current students can use the calculator their grandparent bought as a child. How will movin…

I've never thought about the power consumption of TI calculators. I had an 85 and I recall changing the batteries occasionally, but not very often. I also didn't find the performance speed to be a hindrance during HS, including on the SATs. What did you use your calculator for that it was noticeably too slow for? How often did you have to replace batteries? I get that there are newer technologies out there, and perha…

With current technology, 4 AA batteries should be able to power a calculator for an entire educational career from 6th to 12th grade, maybe more.

Edit: in terms of performance, the buttons and LCD are very unresponsive, you can type faster than they display. When making any kinds of graphs with more than 2 functions, the drawing happens in the order of 5-10 seconds, modern hardware could do that in micro-to-milliseconds and get the CPU back to sleep to save battery. Anything involving regressions of inputted tables can take 10s of seconds, which again feels clunky and eats battery.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#20

Post by gnicholas »

irtefa wrote: post #8

I'm nostalgic for filling in those bubble sheets, even when I hated the tests themselves! They were a huge part of school culture.

In HS I bought a mechanical pencil with .9mm lead. I could bubble in the circles with just over one rotation, and the rectangles with a single swipe. It was the best.
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