Slashdot Mirror
Parents Baffled By Science Questions
Pickens writes "The BBC reports that four out of five parents living in the UK have been stumped by a science question posed by their children with the top three most-asked questions: 'Where do babies come from?', 'What makes a rainbow?' and 'Why is the sky blue?'. The survey was carried out to mark the launch of a new website by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills called Science: So what? So everything."
I am a test designer.
What you are describing is what happens to every test anyone ever writes with the best of intentions. We make a test to, say, place students into the right level of language classes, and the department starts using their gain scores for their grades in those classes, muddling placement and outcome--two different testing situations that would need different methods.
Administration wants an instrument that matches the curriculum closer; you make it; they demand to know why it doesn't have X, Y, or Z. You point out that it isn't in the curriculum. They say "It should be!"
It happens every time. Even BMI, which was basically designed to find starving people, has been repurposed to define physical fitness--something it is not designed to do and cannot accurately assess.
People always misuse measures and then blame the person(s) who made them.
Welcome to my world.