Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools • Hacker News Board

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#31

Post by SilasX » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 9:38 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #27

SilasX wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether that's good or bad depends entirely on the content of the tests. You have to ask, "is this stuff that a graduate of the system should be able to do?" If no, then it's fair to criticize them for having to spend time teaching this, and instead achieve a lower proficiency but teach a broader skill set. But if yes, then any criticism of "teaching for the test" falls flat: this is stuff students need to be able to…

[deleted]

"You wouldn't understand until you've been there" is not a valid policy argument. Not everyone can be everywhere, and yet we still have to debate policy.

>Have you ever tried reading teachers’ magazines? Do you follow research in pedagogy or curriculum design?

No, but you did, and your deep assimilation of the insights therein has enabled you to substantively answer challenges such as the one I posed.

And it doesn't matter, but yes, I volunteered weekly for six years in a fourth grade classroom. I still wouldn't tolerate the response you just gave for anyone claiming to be an expert on some topic, including myself.

"Expertise" has to mean something other than "criticizing others for not having read the same books." It should mean a self-consistent, accurate, predictive worldmodel that can deftly show the errors of an invalid one without attacking the presenter.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#32

Post by logicchains » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 9:41 AM UTC

jwdunne wrote: post #29

logicchains wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there must be private schools somewhere that admit children of below-average intelligence, due to the profit to be had from rich parents with said children, so perhaps it would be instructive to look at how those schools handle it.

In the UK, I've seen richer parents simply send their children who didn't not meet private school's admissions and performance requirements to state school (the one I attended!) whilst their siblings passed the requirements and remained at the private school. I remember two kids from primary school seemed to have disappeared and then reappeared a few months down the line from school year start. They didn't make the c…

That's somewhat disheartening: it suggests that it isn't a problem that can be solved by throwing more money at it.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#33

Post by finance-geek » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 9:47 AM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #12

japhyr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing "rich kid schools" do is filter out many students who are difficult to teach. Teaching and running a school is a lot easier if your goal does not involve teaching everyone who walks through your doors.

If by "difficult to teach" you mean kids who cause problems for the other kids, then yeah. I went to a Catholic high school, and they did not tolerate disruptions. That allowed them to have classes with almost 50 kids and still have better than 95% of the graduating class going on to a four year college.

No, "difficult to teach" often just means kids who have not had a proper meal the previous night because their family cannot afford it. Try paying attention when you are chronically hungry and you understand one of many problems very easily.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#34

Post by smelendez » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 9:56 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #26

douche wrote: post #8

No shit. Public school is all about teaching to the tests. There's no time to actually learn anything useful , because everything is focused on bringing up the state test scores, which influence funding. Not only are you spending all this time teaching what is going to be on the standardized test, and how to structure essays and do your work according to what the test graders expect, but there's the two weeks taken o…

Whether that's good or bad depends entirely on the content of the tests. You have to ask, "is this stuff that a graduate of the system should be able to do?" If no, then it's fair to criticize them for having to spend time teaching this, and instead achieve a lower proficiency but teach a broader skill set. But if yes, then any criticism of "teaching for the test" falls flat: this is stuff students need to be able to…

Here are some of the arguments I've seen:

-- testing itself takes a lot of time away from instruction, sometimes days at a time for each of multiple tests.

-- In addition to learning the material that's officially tested by an exam, students are forced to study the idiosyncracies of the exam: how questions are phrased, how graders expect to see written answers, etc. That takes more time away from studying actual curricular material and forces students to focus on something they, their parents and their teachers all find silly and boring, reducing respect for the education system.

-- The material that's on the test is often the lowest common denominator for what students should know, calculated over a US state or group of states. This means there will be material that's not on the test but that everyone thinks in a particular community thinks kids should learn (history, art, music, etc.) or even that most people in a state think should be taught but a vocal minority oppose (comparative religion, black history, evolution, etc.). That material will be left off the test, and a teacher won't have time to cover it because he or she has to spend all the class's time on stuff on the test. If a science test will never mention Neil Armstrong or Neil deGrasse Tyson, a teacher has no incentive to mention either of them, and may even be penalize for doing so at the expense of more practice with the density formula.

-- Teachers are evaluated based on test scores, often to the exclusion of other factors. This stresses teachers out at test time, which causes them to stress students out. Students come to dislike school and learn less.

-- The tests are sometimes flawed, but by the time people realize the results are wrong, their results have already factored into policy, personnel decisions and student placement.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#35

Post by mamon » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 10:17 AM UTC

In Poland we have three levels of schools: 6 years elementary, 3 years middle and 3 years high school. There are three standard tests done at the end of each level, which are the basis for the admission to the next level school. I don't see the point of making more standard tests than that - it's just an unnecessary distraction.

And yes, with Polish system you also waste some time (usually last semester) for teachers to do test-specific teaching, but that still seems better than having 6-7 standard tests per year

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#36

Post by tsotha » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 10:19 AM UTC

finance-geek wrote: post #33

tsotha wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "difficult to teach" you mean kids who cause problems for the other kids, then yeah. I went to a Catholic high school, and they did not tolerate disruptions. That allowed them to have classes with almost 50 kids and still have better than 95% of the graduating class going on to a four year college.

No, "difficult to teach" often just means kids who have not had a proper meal the previous night because their family cannot afford it. Try paying attention when you are chronically hungry and you understand one of many problems very easily.

Uh huh. How many of those kids are there, you figure, on a percentage basis?

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#37

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 10:30 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#38

Post by jessedhillon » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 10:33 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #26

douche wrote: post #8

No shit. Public school is all about teaching to the tests. There's no time to actually learn anything useful , because everything is focused on bringing up the state test scores, which influence funding. Not only are you spending all this time teaching what is going to be on the standardized test, and how to structure essays and do your work according to what the test graders expect, but there's the two weeks taken o…

Whether that's good or bad depends entirely on the content of the tests. You have to ask, "is this stuff that a graduate of the system should be able to do?" If no, then it's fair to criticize them for having to spend time teaching this, and instead achieve a lower proficiency but teach a broader skill set. But if yes, then any criticism of "teaching for the test" falls flat: this is stuff students need to be able to…

Don't you think there's a qualitative difference involved in teaching for the purpose of instilling enough knowledge to pass an exam, versus teaching to instill a passion for the material? Making dioramas, drawing political cartoons, and wearing togas while reciting Mark Antony's speech from Julius Caesar were the kinds of things that kept me motivated to read and understand material in which I held no innate interest, and all of that seems superfluous to a test-driven approach.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#39

Post by 6d0debc071 » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 10:36 AM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #26

douche wrote: post #8

No shit. Public school is all about teaching to the tests. There's no time to actually learn anything useful , because everything is focused on bringing up the state test scores, which influence funding. Not only are you spending all this time teaching what is going to be on the standardized test, and how to structure essays and do your work according to what the test graders expect, but there's the two weeks taken o…

Whether that's good or bad depends entirely on the content of the tests. You have to ask, "is this stuff that a graduate of the system should be able to do?" If no, then it's fair to criticize them for having to spend time teaching this, and instead achieve a lower proficiency but teach a broader skill set. But if yes, then any criticism of "teaching for the test" falls flat: this is stuff students need to be able to…

> You have to ask, "is this stuff that a graduate of the system should be able to do?"

Uhm, I don't feel like I do? Or at least insofar as I do, that set feels like it should be really small, because: Which graduate?

There are many things that we'd like a graduate to do, but we don't need for every graduate to be able to do. I would quite like my CS grads to understand big O notation - I would not attempt to teach it to everyone. I would quite like my history grads to be able to perform independent research - I don't really care if my receptionist can.

There are basic low level things that everyone should be able to do. Addition, multiplication, subtraction, division. But that set is quite small, and it beggars belief that one needs a hundred plus tests to figure out where someone is with respect to those things.

Structured within that context, the idea that it's a good model to teach the tests; to have a list of things that you'd like graduates to be able to do and if they don't do that they're failing and the school's failing (and so on); seems supremely wasteful. If the students do some maths in the mean time and discover a passion for some particular element of it, great, but it's not useful to attempt to make them meet some idealised standard that doesn't reflect reality, rather than focusing on teaching people where their inclinations and skills lie.

Re: Study says standardized testing is overwhelming nation’s public schools

#40

Post by mschuster91 » Sun, Oct 25, 2015, 10:37 AM UTC

The fallacy with using tests of the kids as a marker for the quality of the teachers is that you just can't do that and get reliable results.

A bunch of black kids from the ghettos, who have their parents in jail/dead, worrying about siblings etc. and no cash to spend on basic school equipment, much less a decent meal every day, will have vastly lower scores than a bunch of white kids with helicopter parents.

If schools were adequately financed e.g. to provide free, healthy meals, proper study rooms and free school supplies, that could at least reduce the gap.

Unfortunately, kids can't vote and a large number of poor black kids end up in jail or dead anyway so they can't vote even when they're old. And so, schools remain the first place to go when politicians need to cut expenses.