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The End of Scantron Tests

theatlantic.com

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Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#31

Post by wbl »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #25
JasonFruit wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Take a look at this entrance exam to Harvard from 1869: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvarde... Good luck finding high school students today who could get a good score on this test. There's vastly more emphasis on classical knowledge: Greek, Latin, ancient history, mathematical proofs...

If Greek or Latin we're still requirements for Harvard high school students would become fluent.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#32

Post by thaumasiotes »

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…

> I've looked at the CollegeBoard's engineering job listings before and they were far below market rates.

I assume you can make that up by leaking the tests.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#33

Post by defrost »

pixl97 wrote: post #21
JasonFruit wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And pretty much all those jobs you're talking about are gone or low paying. Farmers aren't calculating how many pounds of barley per acre they need. They are operating computer controlled heavy equipment that does a huge amount of the calculations for them because someone thousands of miles away wrote magicial electric symbols in sand. The world is a vastly more complicated place now.

Wow.

Someone doesn't spend time in rural areas.

Where I live it's almost all third generation "family farms", those that are still here after others have left.

The farms are bigger but they're still at core family farms and businesses with capital costs in the millions to tens of millions, run and worked by people that farm and almost all whom have other jobs and|or businesses in parallel.

One typical neighbour is planting out several hundred acres, has a side supply business with the grain coop to site several five story concrete grain silos, owns and runs four or five local school buses (and employs drivers) with a partnership in a bee hive placement business (for honey but mainly for pollination in the district).

Between them they all have a basic grasp of (with different members specialising) building, radio equipment, GPS equipment and data managment, double entry bookkeeping and employee paperwork for a million+ per annum turn over, mechanics for cars, tractors, bob cats, etc, agonomy, animal health, first aid, welding, carpentry, . . .

Hmm, while I think of it the same family has the local volunteer fire chief (another part time job) who handles bush fire preparedness in the area, fire breaks etc.

There's no reliance on "magical someones" thousands of miles away - those services are used, sure - but they're not counted on to be always available or there when needed - farming would just grind to halt with that level of unquestioning dependance.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#34

Post by bhaney »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #25
JasonFruit wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Take a look at this entrance exam to Harvard from 1869: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvarde... Good luck finding high school students today who could get a good score on this test. There's vastly more emphasis on classical knowledge: Greek, Latin, ancient history, mathematical proofs...

I can't even figure out what some of these are asking.

Question 5 of the History and Geography section is just "Leonidas, Pausanias, Lysander."

Am I supposed to write about what they have in common? Who they each were? When and where they ruled? Other questions seem to include some form of instruction while being equally short ("Compare Athens with Sparta") but that one and a couple others are just a topic with seemingly no direction at all.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#35

Post by nvy »

gnicholas wrote: post #20
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.

Was it a Sumogrip, by chance? I had one of those too and it was awesome. I used it for everything and eventually lost it in undergrad.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#36

Post by whimsicalism »

F00Fbug wrote: post #26

I remember working on a project to put scantron machines in every public school in DC back in the 80s. We built the interface from the scantron machine to the DECmate II (a micro-PDP-8, if I remember correctly); async io in assembler... I learned a lot on that part of the project. Then we wrote the scanning software to allow lots of teachers to scan their tests in at the end of the day. Next we built a network over d…

Tracks with my extensive experience of scantron in the DC public school system.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#37

Post by Nilocshot »

F00Fbug wrote: post #29
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you made a black box at a certain place, that form would be interpreted as the answer key and would screw up a whole pile of scanning Out of curiosity, where?

In the left margin, about 2/3 of the way down... between a couple of alignment marks. But that was 35 years ago... I could be wrong. I always felt like I held an immense power with that knowledge, but never used it!!!

The scantron forms that were in use while I was in high school had a sort of meta-data section, where students would put their name, the date, etc. One of those boxes was labeled 'key'. I always assumed it performed that function, but I never tried it to see.

Maybe the intention was to make it easier for teachers to identify a student maliciousmy marking it?

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#38

Post by whimsicalism »

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…

I mean there are technologies that I think kids should learn that TI can’t even approach. Symbolic integration, for example.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#39

Post by lmm »

stouset wrote: post #6
cudgy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It's rather difficult to imagine a world where that was the norm and to compare how different our world now must be, when nearly everyone has completed high school.” Why? Are you sure that there was a significant difference between 4th grade in the 1930’s and 12th grade in modern days? Many students graduate high school barely able to read and write.

Surely you’re joking that you don’t think there’s much of a practical difference between an era where 90% of the population had less than eight years of schooling, and one where the overwhelming majority have twelve to sixteen. I mean, you can literally just look up the statistics on literacy rates.

> I mean, you can literally just look up the statistics on literacy rates.

From what I remember they're shockingly low for a world where everyone finishes high school. IIRC only about 2/3 have even basic functional literacy?

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#40

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

wbl wrote: post #31
LarsDu88 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at this entrance exam to Harvard from 1869: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvarde... Good luck finding high school students today who could get a good score on this test. There's vastly more emphasis on classical knowledge: Greek, Latin, ancient history, mathematical proofs...

If Greek or Latin we're still requirements for Harvard high school students would become fluent.

They sure would enjoy the salutatory speeches delivered at commencement: https://youtu.be/LYewkFKPPhs?si=egbRqSO2lMVxIMzz
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