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."

Comments

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Wonko the Sane]

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

Re:The science of test design

[reve_etrange]

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.