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The End of Scantron Tests

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Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#51

Post by cafard »

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...

The examination reflects the curriculum, and the preparatory schools taught to the examination.

Henry Adams on the Harvard of his day (he entered in 1854):

"disappointment apart, Harvard College was probably less hurtful than any other university then in existence. It taught little, and that little ill, but it left the mind open, free from bias, ignorant of facts, but docile. The graduate had few strong prejudices. He knew little, but his mind remained supple, ready to receive knowledge."

"In the one branch he most needed--mathematics--barring the few first scholars, failure was so nearly universal that no attempt at grading could have had value, and whether he stood fortieth or ninetieth must have been an accident or the personal favor of the professor. Here his education failed lamentably. At best he could never have been a mathematician; at worst he would never have cared to be one; but he needed to read mathematics, like any other universal language, and he never reached the alphabet."

But a) perhaps the mathematical curriculum had improved over the fifteen years between his entrance and that exam, and b) a large proportion of those who write about their schooling speak so poorly of it that one ends by suspecting exaggeration.

[Edit: in the spirit of "show your work": https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2044/pg2044-images.html]

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#52

Post by didntcheck »

bluepod4 wrote: post #46
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…

Have you seen the newer calculators? TI does still sell the older calculators but the newer ones have color screens at least. The interface is different (from my 2000s TI-83+ and TI-89) too. Also, I would have appreciated the app/online version when I was in school. The iPad app looks really nice. I felt a bit of jealousy when I saw it lol. I know you mentioned College Board’s calculator rules and iPads obviously wou…

It's also worth considering their competitors. My experience in the UK system was that TIs were a rarity and most people used graphing calculators from Casio (if they felt the need for an upgrade from a scientific calculator at all), which were cheaper, lighter, widely available in any good stationery section, and appeared more feature-rich (better screens with intuitive menus, built-in SD card slots, and probably better processors). In particular some TIs I saw lacked graphical equation display, which would be a deal breaker, exotically when our existing £15 scientific calculators had made it a basic feature

There was no requirement from the schools or exam board to use a particular brand. In theory you could do everything you needed with a basic scientific calc like the ubiquitous FX-83GT (and many people did), and the only real rule was "no computer algebra systems" (I believe the TI-89 was given as an example of a disallowed calculator). In fact the teachers were somewhat discouraging of graphing calculators at all, saying you can get one if you feel the graphs help you, but you shouldn't need anything more than what you had in GCSE

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#53

Post by gumby »

In the early 80s our entire SAT prep session consisted of being told one high school morning: 1 - fill the bubble in completely with the right kind of pencil or the answer wouldn't be seen by the machine and 2 - the formula of "if you don't know the answer, if you can eliminate at least one option, it's worth guessing".

A lot cheaper and more time efficient than buying a book, much less taking a prep class. Perhaps those options didn't exist back then?

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#54

Post by stouset »

lmm wrote: post #39
stouset wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You remember incorrectly.

https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_State...

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#55

Post by JasonFruit »

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...

That's an amazing test, if what you want to evaluate is the candidate's immersion in the wellspring of Western culture (and some math). I'm struck by how little fluency the Greek test requires, though: it looks to me (with my "small Latine and lesse Greeke") like it's mostly grammar work, since the difficult words are all supplied.

I would have loved living among people whose elites valued Western culture so highly.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#56

Post by function_seven »

bluepod4 wrote: post #50
function_seven wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, those things had 9 levels of contrast. With a fresh set of batteries the display would be crisp and contrasty at “3” or something. Then slowly you needed more and more levels to feel normal. Before you know it you’re running at contrast “9” and contemplating your next score. Then you realize, “oh yeah, batteries are on their way out.” As you snap the final AA place, you sign contentedly as you dial it back down…

Hmm. I’m not bragging at all but as someone who got a perfect score on the math section of the SAT (since scantron/bubble answers are being talked about) and enjoyed math a lot, I don’t recall this at all lol. Do you mind mentioning the year(s)? I said early 2000s in my first comment. The batteries lasted, at least for me. I recall having to replace them for sure. But it was never a big deal. And I’m speaking as a Bl…

I had a TI-81 in 1993, and upgraded to a TI-85 in 1996 I think. I didn't mean my comment to be an indictment of TI calculator battery life. My experience with them matches yours. They were great!

I do remember the ominous feeling every time I noticed the screen getting fainter, checking to see what contrast level I was currently at. But it wasn't actually that big of a deal.

I probably only needed to change them twice a year or something.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#57

Post by pixl97 »

defrost wrote: post #33
pixl97 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

>Someone doesn't spend time in rural areas.

Pretty poor assumption being that I come from a family of midwestern farmers that have been integrating high technology into their operations for decades.

>There's no reliance on "magical someones" thousands of miles away

You just listed out a huge number of things before that where they do have said reliance. Those bobcats/cars/tractors are not made in their neighborhood. Instead there is a vast network that supplies these objects to them at a national and worldwide level. If the fertilizer doesn't show up in spring, yields plummet. If the fuel trucks supplying petro stop farming in the mid-west stops. We aren't running steam engines that can be fed off of locally sourced wood (ok, maybe the Amish still are).

You live in a global economy that farming depends on. This entire rugged individualism works ok with short term problems, and falls apart as long term problems build up.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#58

Post by cudgy »

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.

Just because someone went to school longer, doesn’t mean that they learned more or learned skills they need to function in society. Also, schools today are full of distractions, class changes, unnecessary technology, and much larger class sizes than was present in the 1930’s. It's just not the same environment and simply comparing years of attendance is a naive approach.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#59

Post by jstarfish »

callalex wrote: post #19
gnicholas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-milliseco…

I always liked the sluggishness.

It made me think every operation through before I did it, so I couldn't just bruteforce results through guesswork. And the graph-drawing process was hypnotic.

For some models, you couldn't even cancel drawing once it started so you really had to validate your own inputs.

Everything about it forced an abundance of caution and efficiency...two qualities overlooked by so many "engineers" rushing through everything they do today.

Re: The End of Scantron Tests

#60

Post by tivert »

paulpauper wrote: post #14

"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 biase…

> So all formats are biased.

Bias isn't a binary quality, so that's an oversimplification.

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