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Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

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Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#121

Post by saraid216 »

jellicle wrote: post #19

Sigh. You need both. The reality is that there's a lot of book-learning in the world. You're never going to build a rocket to the moon by starting in your backyard with some sheet metal - your lifespan isn't long enough if you take that approach. You have to read books written by people who have gone before, and learn from their mistakes, which you can do at a far more rapid pace than you can by making all those mist…

> The purpose is to test if you can read a passage and comprehend it.

I disagree. The purpose is not to test if you can read a passage. The purpose is to test if you can show someone else you can read a passage. That's not only an incredibly important distinction, because the ability to communicate is an evaluatable skill, but also the skill itself is essential to have.

On the other hand, I do have to admit that a lot of tests are designed to evaluate things that can't really be evaluated... but that's largely because decent testing is hard to scale.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#122

Post by bgentry »

From TFA:

It failed to convey that the whole purpose of having a microscope is to see things that you can’t see with the naked eye.

Umm, the 2nd sentence in the all-caps introduction:

BY PRODUCING A MAGNIFIED IMAGE, THE MICROSCOPE REVEALS DETAILS THAT ARE UNDETECTABLE TO THE NAKED EYE

I understand that the author is trying to make a point, but proving his incompetence in a simple reading comprehension example does not help his case.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#123

Post by simonbrown »

byoung2 wrote: post #103

Having spent a decade of my life in for-profit education, specifically standardized test preparation (Sylvan, Kaplan, College Network, Grockit, Veritas Prep), I can say that there is more data that could be collected from tests. For example, instead of looking who got the "right" answer, you could look at which wrong answers people selected and why. For example, students who chose "A" probably have experience with mi…

How would this data be used?

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#124

Post by pcote »

A lot of the discussion here focuses on critical thinking development which is an interesting topic. Does compulsory testing or even compulsory education in general do children any service in that regard? Are critical thinking skills better developed when a kid's education is self-directed? I think these are all fair questions.

Personally, I'm a fan of self-directed learning but that doesn't mean I'm right. Still, it strikes me that teaching people to think critically is like teaching them to be happy or to love. It seems kind of difficult to quantify.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#125

Post by imgabe »

jellicle wrote: post #60
raganwald wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writer's complaint is daft. The purpose is to test if you can read a passage and comprehend it. Has nothing to do with microscopes. From my understanding of cognitive science, the question asked is deeply flawed if you want to test comprehension without testing knowledge of microscopes. One approach to answering questions like this is to build a little model in your head of what is being described. You then answe…

> One approach to answering questions like this is to build a little model This test question isn't testing that. > What I’m saying is that answering this question well requires experience with microscopes or similar devices. It sure doesn't. It requires you to be able to read and comprehend text. That's it. The subject could have been Martian fizzbozzles instead of microscopes. > Being able to answer the question wi…

> Anyone who can read and comprehend text can answer it with no prior knowledge of the subject.

That's the writer's complaint. In order for this question to be testing reading comprehension rather than laboratory experience, it must be assumed that the test taker has not used a microscope. Otherwise, they could answer the question without even looking at the text.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#126

Post by calibraxis »

raganwald wrote: post #68
jellicle wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One approach to answering questions like this is to build a little model This test question isn't testing that. > What I’m saying is that answering this question well requires experience with microscopes or similar devices. It sure doesn't. It requires you to be able to read and comprehend text. That's it. The subject could have been Martian fizzbozzles instead of microscopes. > Being able to answer the question wi…

My HN friend, my argument was that the writer isn’t daft , and neither is his complaint, and I stand by that. My argument is that the writer raises interesting and useful questions, and I stand by that too. As to the fact that the question doesn’t test internal modelling, of course it does. If you made it a question about something nobody has ever seen before, then it wouldn’t test knowledge of microscopes. But it do…

Yes, if it were truly just about reading comprehension, then the test-writers would be horrifically incompetent, and therefore unfit to test anyone. Anyone who competently designs tests (experimenters, pollsters, etc) knows to address such biasing factors.

But I think the testers aren't total morons, and know that such a question is biased towards children with proper (privileged) backgrounds where microscopes and the respective training are commonplace. They'll be faster at answering the question and not feel ignorant — crucial advantages on tests.

(The testers may not even like this facet of their jobs, like ad industry developers who use ad-blockers, but it sure beats unemployment.)

And the whole question smacks of "scientism", where tools are confused with science. You never see a question like, "Scientists have believed something for 200 years. Is it necessarily true?"

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#127

Post by Karunamon »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #117
fennecfoxen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blah blah blah blah. "To avoid crushing the glass slide when focusing, begin with the microscope close to the specimen and then gradually back off to focus." Blah blah blah blah. Utterly incomprehensible!

And you know what? I'll tell you why people get this wrong. It's because their brains turn off. They say "omg microscopes scary! big block of text!" and guess at answers instead of actually bothering to try and read the text. That's one reason why they get poor scores at reading comprehension: a lack of reading with intent to comprehend. Heck, if they're pressed for time and the guessing-wrong penalty is low enough,…

>It's because their brains turn off. They say "omg microscopes scary! big block of text!"

s/microscope/computer and you have the cause of an average Helpdesk's stress...

ed. Downvotes? Really? Nobody has ever struggled with a problem which could be solved if the help-ee has bothered to read the text on their screen?

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#128

Post by danielweber »

exDM69 wrote: post #46
krschultz wrote: post #13

'We walked into an empty room that once was the metal shop. It was perfect. I could imagine it having tools and materials and workbenches. I could imagine groups of curious kids being active, social, and mobile. ' When I was in 6th grade, they let us use a spot welder and press brake. I still have the box I made out of folded sheet metal from that time. We also had to make a little container out of folded sheet metal…

I, too, was fortunate to have woodworking, mig welding, electronics soldering, combustion engine repair and a little aircraft building as a part of my middle-high school education. I enjoyed it a lot and I learned a lot of stuff that I would have not learned by reading books and taking exams. But I guess American kids won't need any of that since everything is manufactured in China these days. You just need a lot of…

The United States manufactures more than ever before. (Well, the recession probably drooped output a little bit.) China manufactures more stuff than ever, too, so they are a larger share of the world market.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#129

Post by grannyg00se »

I find it hard to believe that the author had trouble with the question. The answer is provided perfectly in the supplied text. If I say that dogs bark when they are cold and then ask a five year old why dogs bark I think I'd be pretty disappointed if they couldn't regurgitate what I just said. Is it so different when written rather than spoken? Can we really be sure that this is a reading comprehension problem as opposed to a basic reading and language problem? I'd like to see if the students who got it wrong could even read the full text. If they can't read it then it is nothing to do with comprehension. They just can't read.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#130

Post by danielweber »

ktizo wrote: post #77
bluekeybox wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you actually have a good point there.

I'm not so sure... The standardised tests don't actually weed out crap teachers as they can just teach to the test, and they do a lot to hurt the effectiveness of good teachers. Also a lot of the motivation of the teacher who was annoyed with my parents was that I was causing problems in tests due to being interested in stuff well outside the domain of what would be taught in class. Set tests largely test how good yo…

"Just teaching to test" isn't always bad. For things like literacy, it's pretty good.
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