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Oregon To Let Students Use Spell Check on State Exams
Starting in 2011, the Oregon Department of Education will let students spell check their work before submitting state exams. From the article: "The move is supposed to help the assessments focus less on typos and more on their writing skills. 'We are not letting a student's keyboarding skills get in the way of being able to judge their writing ability,' said state Superintendent Susan Castillo. 'As we're using technology to improve what we're doing with assessments as a nation, we believe that spell check will be one of those tools.'"
I can see it already...
"But the tool is there, so why should people have to learn proper spelling? Why should people have to learn to do math by hand if they have computers available?"
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Eye think eye sea what their doing hear. :-)
Ian Ameline
Considering that the rules apply only to exams taken by middle and high school students, by then, spelling should be less of a concern than content, structure, and adherence to the theme given for the writing. Spellcheck is a tool that they'll be using for 'real life' implementation of the skills being tested, so it seems fairly reasonable to allow them its use.
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A stately pleasure dome decree
"Carma bee dammed"
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Cute. Per usual it depends on the goal.
My AP English teacher ignored errors (writeo's he called them), and if I recall correctly the AP Exam did too. He expected spelling to be correct for our homework, but not for in-class exams where a 45 minute limit precluded looking-up words in a dictionary. Content & the thesis mattered more than perfection.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Calculators were forbidden in high school chemistry till we could show the teacher that we could use a slide rule properly. Then we could use calculators. If I remember correctly, this was the first class where calculators were allowed / suggested at all.
Like that'll stop them from the usual:
there/their
your/you're
and pretty much everything else listed here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling
I'm a heavy user of spell check, but in no way do I think we should rely solely on that. I have friends who still think it's spelled "congradulations" and that's not a typo. That's just tragic.
This is just lowering the bar so that dumb people feel smart! This does 2 things: -Makes US High School Diplomas worthless (Hey, if the illiterate can get through HS, why would I want to hire one with a HS Diploma?) -Gives a false sense of confidence when they go to college.(Results: more drop outs)
I fail to see how illiterate people would benefit from a spelling checker. It's not a text to speech program--they would still have to string words together to form ideas, and write a semblance of the word for the spelling checker to offer the correct spelling.
And if the colleges allow spelling checkers--and any class that lets you type your paper in your dorm room does--then college performance won't be impacted.
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Not taking the effort to spell correctly or use proper grammar is a sign that you don't think your audience is worth it (assuming it's not merely a sign of ignorance). Why should arrogance be rewarded?
I don't have a problem with allowing calculators... once the student has demonstrated that he can function without one. The same goes for spell-checkers. I'm happy that Firefox has it, and it helps me, but I can spell better than most people without one. These are tools, not crutches, or at least that's how their supposed to be used.
In an education environment where keyboarding and using PowerPoint are considered "computer science", we can only expect other similar nonsense.
Our schools (including higher education) in the U.S. have almost completely abandoned the idea of "education" and seem content to merely train workers, and poorly at that.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It's turned out well for those that are doing advanced math for whom there are multiple simple calculations culminating in the final data set required to complete the tested conceptual exercise.
It's worked out quite poorly for students who actually need to learn and master multiplication, division, consistently correct addition and subtraction.
Wasting cycles on spelling is asinine. If they're truly illiterate, they probably won't do well on the test anyway. It's not like our spelling rules REALLY make sense, nor were they enforced until the last century or two.
Having taught mathematics at the university, let me tell you: calculators have been a total disaster. You see students stare at "14/7" and reach for the calculator. Students have no feel for numbers whatsoever, and since they do all the arithmetic by calculator they have had no practice of the algebraic properties of arithmetic, and hence have also failed to learn algebra.
What about:
Except that has nothing to do with calculator use
Seriously, calculator use in Canadian schools is at least common as it is in the US, and they're outperforming the US alongside Japan and Korea. Think about what you say before you say it.
I'm sure there's a class of people that are unable to spell correctly no matter how much time they have and how much of that time they apply to spelling accurately.
For that matter, faced with a written exam with a time limit -- people must decide how they use the limited time they have. Should I be rewarded because I am a champion speller, and can spend more time on the important parts of my composition, while others must devote more of their time to ensuring they spell correctly?
The other thing I'd like to add is that your perception of a correlation between poor spelling and poor grammar and clarity could present a problem -- graders who have that same perception are likely to grade exam-takers with poor spelling worse due to their bias against poor spellers. Maybe poor spelling has a greater impact on grading at high levels than you might suppose. Just food for thought...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Really, who cares how they spell things in Oregon? Personally, I find all this talk about improving our education system quite unpatriotic. How would the US survive if its population became well-educated? Who would fight wars? Who would overpay taxes? Who would bother to vote? Who would watch TV, do Christmas shopping, eat fast food, or shop at Walmart? Oregon can't sustain our entire economy, you know. We all need to pitch in. Good education is a privilege, not a right.
I agree with you to an extent, and I'm sure there are some people who's only hope is a calculator, but (as I mentioned above) I'd say that withholding them in lower level courses does force the development of at least a basic level of mathematical competence in the middle ability range. People might be bad at fast and accurate calculation, but in my experience we're pretty good at ballpark figures and sanity checking - if anything those skills are more important as we rely more on computers; when there's a 'black box' doing the work for you, it's all the more valuable to be able to spot errors. The alternative is, as we have seen, customer service reps insisting that 0.002cents = $0.002 simply because the computer says so.