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Florida Thinks Their Students Are Too Stupid To Know the Right Answers
gurps_npc writes "Robert Krampf, who runs the web site 'The Happy Scientist,' recently wrote in his blog about problems with Florida's Science FCAT. The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is an attempt to measure how smart the students are. Where other states have teachers cheating to help students, Florida decided to grade correct answers as wrong. Mr. Krampf examined the state's science answers and found several that clearly listed right answers as wrong. One question had 3 out of 4 answers that were scientifically true. He wrote to the Florida Department of Education's Test Development center. They admitted he was right about the answers, but said they don't expect 5th graders to realize they were right. For this reason they marked them wrong. As such, they were not changing the tests. Note: they wouldn't let him examine real tests, just the practice tests given out. So we have no idea if FCAT is simply too lazy to provide good practice questions, or too stupid to be allowed to test our children."
News stories out of Florida always paint Floridians as stupid, so this is why Fark.com has a special "Florida" tag.
Oh man, everyone's turning a multiple-guess test, into an essay question.
When there are multiple answers that could be correct, the job of the test-taker is to choose the "best" answer. Almost invariably "best" is "the one that the test writer was thinking of". Clearly you have to put yourself in the head of a high school or middle school or grade school teacher to understand "best" in that context, and someone with a PhD or even just graduate coursework in the subject is going to be at a disadvantage.
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
Glass is nevertheless a solid, despite urban myths to the contrary.
Just like the green and violet stars. Unfortunately, the problem has been widespread for a long time.
The link is to Feynman's account of the various problems with math and science textbooks (and the text selection process). There certainly isn't any more competition or higher standards among textbook publishers today - indeed, the anti-patterns of the Texas schoolbooks are often even foisted upon states with far superior science and math (and history and English) standards.
.: Semper Absurda
Once you have defined a measurement system that correlates with your opinion of "soft". Most readings on the mineral hardness scale are hardly what a normal person would call "soft". A number 2 pencil is "soft", but you can stab someone with it.
The question didn't say "soft", it said "softer". The number 2 pencil might well be hard, but it's still softer than a carbon-steel dagger.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Having taken the FCAT from 6th through 11th grade (where it stops) I can say with absolute certainty that it is the easiest test I have ever taken. Since I was always in the gifted program for math, and FCAT tests your current grade level, I was always tested 2 grade levels below what I was actively being taught. For reading comprehension, you are randomly assigned a packet, and by sheer randomness I was handed the exact same prompts in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade. The test is an utter joke, and anyone who fails it, honestly NEVER paid any attention in class anyway. I know exactly 4 people that failed the test that did not have learning disabilities, and to be fair one of them put B for every response because the tests only matter in 4th,8th, and 10th grade.
The problem with the FCAT is it is not a test to learn what the students have comprehended through the course of the year; rather, it is a set of guidelines for teachers to stick to so that students learn specifically that material during the year. Students in Florida have suffered for it too. The tests are an utter joke and most students will agree. Florida needs to find a different teaching method, especially since the real problem with Florida Schools, at least where I live, is that they are ALL far past capacity. Reduce class size and improve class quality rather than focus teaching to a standardized test that should have been thrown out years ago.
You are ignorant. "The petals of red roses are softer than the petals of yellow roses" cannot be "proven as fact" unless you test every yellow and red rose. Otherwise, it's still a correlation. You think you understand the scientific method, but you don't.
I wish it were that easy.
In Utah at least, the local schools are 'supported' by a massive state bureaucracy (known as the Utah State Office Of Education). It had its own army of curriculum specialists, administrators, PR people, union-management interface managers, test/competency proctors and formulation managers, textbook approval boards, textbook distribution centers (local school districts 'bought' books from state depots), teacher certification specialists (mostly to keep track of all the teachers, approve classes and CE credits, etc), inter-school activity specialists, and its own massive IT department to maintain the state .edu sites, servers, and networks.
If you look back in my own posting history (well, via Google), you'll see when I put up the first public school approved Linux courses, in January 2000. I had to contend with the local city school board, the local county school board, and the USOE (that state office I mentioned :) ). A root canal would have been less painful (and far less tedious), just to get that one course approved as a replacement for the 1980's era UNIX System 7 (no, really!) course that I found when I was first hired. It was approved mainly because enough bureaucrats at the top had heard the word "Linux" to know it would make them look more up-to-date (and don't ask about explaining the GPL. That took 3 months all by itself, and went all the way up to the state Attorney General's office. I never thought I would never hear the phrase "I don't understand..." so many damned times. :( )
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You have to look at what the parents are doing: having a child at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and getting others to pay to raise and support that child. An awesome reproduction strategy, and one that can propogate if it isn't stopped.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
That problem is quite easily remediable. Quite simply take schools from local government budgets and shift them to state budgets.
Here in Australia schools are run by the states, and people are talking about shifting control to the Federal level as 6 states worth of administration is considered 6 times too many.
They only asked for testable, not objectivable.
You can do a survey and statistically test if a significantly bigger enough number of people prefer one of the singing birds.
Or, if you work in advertisement, you can even have more tools to test people's preference (I don't know for auditory cues, but markteers can for exemple measure how long your eyes spent on any part of a picture to check for measurable preferences).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
From what I remember, a lot of them were very indistinct. The answer would be what was mentioned in the book. Quite often, you couldn't apply logic to the questions, without trying to guess at the thought of the test writer. That's doable if you know the teacher who wrote the test. If the test is derived from the book and multiple authors, it becomes an exercise in futility. I've seen questions where there are clearly 3 answers that are correct on various merit. Then it becomes a game of "guess one."
Here's an example. I'm just making this one up, but it serves as an illustration. I've seen such questions on standardized tests, where you are suppose to think about what the right answer is.
Q: Which one is different?
1) Cow
2) Dog
3) Car
4) Tree
5) Mountain
1,2,4 are all living things.
3,4,5 can all be green.
1,2 are mammals.
1,2,4,5 are all natural.
1,2,5 all have the vowel "O" in them.
1,2,3 only have one vowel letter.
1,2,3,5 all have a vowel in the second position.
So, based on the criteria I chose, weighing each answer by the number of matches, it would make up:
1) 6
2) 6
3) 3
4) 3
5) 4
The right answer (since I made up the test) is actually 2. I intended the answer to be which is smallest.
It's never to who can apply the best logic to the question. It's a game of "can you guess what the writer was thinking?" I've taken constructive thinking classes, and this was one of the questions that I remember.
Q: Which one is different?
1) A
2) E
3) I
4) O
5) X
The right answer in that one is 4. Why? Because they were looking at the shapes that make up the letters, not the fact that 1-4 were vowels. There were no hints towards that conclusion, nor guiding questions leading up to it. It probably made sense on a previous revision of the test, where other questions helped you understand what this question was looking for. In the case of the test that was on, it was just dropped in the middle of a bunch of other random questions.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.