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

The most important lesson in life being taught

[GodfatherofSoul]

Who's right doesn't matter, who has the power does!

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's right doesn't matter, who has the power does!

Yes, but kiddies also need to be taught that it *ought* to work that way.

Otherwise some of them will get uppity later in life.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Wonko the Sane]

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[kelemvor4]

Who's right doesn't matter, who has the power does!

Yes, but kiddies also need to be taught that it *ought* to work that way.

Otherwise some of them will get uppity later in life.

Then they'll end up posting on slashdot all the time.. we can't have that.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[causality]

There is no power involved. The only FCAT that matters is the 10th grade one. You need that to graduate.

It's the power to sow confusion which actually ends up making impressionable people more complacent and compliant. It's hard to stand up for yourself or generally to have a backbone when you aren't rooted in a solid foundation of fact. A generation of young people who don't know which way is up and which way is down is a tyrant's wet dream, for they will be needy and dependent and that's always been the ticket to real power.

You don't think this, the side effects it will have, or the fact it comes from government is one great big accident do you? It's not so much a carefully planned conspiracy. It's more like, the same mentality that believes power for its own sake is a worthy goal is the same mentality that would believe this kind of institutionalized insanity is a good idea.

Anyone who really had the students' best interests at heart would expect better of them than they expect from themselves and equip them to rise to meet or exceed that standard. Assuming from the start that they're just too dumb to be expected to understand some basic things comes from the belief that they're already under your thumb, right where they "should be", and will always be dependent, subservient and mediocre. No one expects excellence from cogs in a machine or blocks at the bottom of a pyramid. If any of you have taken the time to learn about how public schooling was established in America, then you are aware the industrial tycoons feared the poor and wanted to keep them stupid and created their own imitation of the Prussian schools and the Hindu caste system in order to do it. We still pay for that today.

Ideally, adult people wouldn't have children they were not in a position to afford, both raising them and educating them. Since the bar for personal responsibility (and actual adulthood, which is marked by sound decision-making) has been lowered so much, government involvement is here to stay for the foreseeable future. If we're going to have government involved in the upbringing of children, it needs to be in a limited and controlled fashion. For this reason I would love a voucher-type system where the money follows the child, not the other way around (which do we value more?), and parents can move their children to other schools at-will instead of being stuck.

But allowing government to directly administer the schools is a terrible, horrible idea. It breeds stupidity like this, and zero tolerance, and the total lack of justice (in a fistfight, the unprovoked attacker AND the defender are both punished equally?!) and it can do nothing else. That is in the nature of the situation when you hand your children over to these people. Seriously, stop acting surprised every time there's a story like this. I for one would never consider having children until I could make other arrangements -- private school if I have the money or homeschooling in a friendly community if I don't. But then I don't think I'm entitled to create life, I don't pretend that this is something that "just happens" as if it weren't the product of adult decisions, and I don't think I'm entitled to shift the burden of parenting onto other people. It's a situation I wouldn't be in unless I were truly prepared to handle it. No excuses, no bullshit, and no pretending like my actions have no impact on it.

If you love your children and care for their well-being you don't make excuses about not subjecting them to such a suffocating and degrading environment as modern public schools. If you love your convenience more, and secretly regard your children as little more than property or sophisticated pets, another chore to be done, then you whine about how that's "too hard" or how it's so terrible that not everyone can do the same because they fail to plan ahead, have children they are not prepared to raise, etc. It amazes me how people say things like that as though more good examples wouldn't have a positive effect.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the most important lesson here is that authority can and should be challenged.

The FAA used to administer multiple choice tests from a closed database of question/answer pairs until someone successfully sued. Now every student can study all the questions/answer pairs from which a small subset appear on an actual certification exam. Because the question/answer set is open to scrutiny, it is verifiable, and where the questions are invalid, they are thrown out. The courts found the question of openness worthy of consideration in that case, but you'd probably have a hard time making the argument that a 5th grader has standing to sue the state of Florida for incorrectly assessing its students. Whether the federal government might find the question of accuracy in the FCAT worth pursuing could be another matter, being that they distribute funds on the basis of test results. (Good thing the Bush's aren't still in office to take the heat for elementary-gate.)

Holding students to a standard that implies the state of Florida's authority is unassailable is just the sort of thing I would expect from a bureaucrat who really needs a demotion to a position more befitting of their sense of responsibility to the electorate. Something like turd-wrangler in a public park.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[kelemvor4]

There is no power involved. The only FCAT that matters is the 10th grade one. You need that to graduate.

3rd grade FCAT also matters. If a student does not pass 3rd grade FCAT the law says they can't be promoted to 4th.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[PeanutButterBreath]

In fact, public schools do not breed the kind of spineless, easily tyrannized citizens that you claim. If what you claim were true, everyone would hold teachers in high esteem. On the contrary, teachers are nobody's boss in America. They are hamstrung by tribal politicians, terrorized by broken testing regimes and bullied by parents who think teachers are simply there to babysit their unruly children.

The problem is not that America's schools breed spineless students. The problem is that America's broken priorities breed spineless teachers.

Moreover, as is often the case, government management is the worst option, except for all the alternatives. Our public schools have many problems, but they do a commendable job, considering what they have to work with.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[digitallife]

You know, I have 2 children, and I'm f'ing sick and tired of people here on slashdot standing on their pulpits preaching about how others should raise their kids, or what they would do if they 'love' their children. It's the hardest damn job in the world to raise kids, and every single parent (whether you think so or not) loves their children. They do the best they are able and know how. One thing I can practically guarantee: if you haven't actually DONE what you are preaching that others should, then it doesn't work like you think it will. That's a basic lesson in life.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[RazorSharp]

I'm sick of bad parents bitching about the difficulties of parenting as an excuse for what a poor job they're doing.

I'm not saying you're a bad parent - I don't know anything about you. But the fallacious excuse you just spewed is one that is far too often used by a parent to defend how they've raised their child who just got in trouble or just dropped out or became an embarrassment in some other way. It's one thing to believe that being a parent has given you some insights into raising kids, it's another to say that you're beyond reproach of any non-parent. I don't believe your claim that every single parent loves their children, but I would agree that most do. But love isn't much of a recompense for bringing a person into this world without being able to properly provide for them.

The fact of the matter is that people who consciously choose not to have children tend to be the ones who realize what it takes to be a parent. It's the hopeless, short-sighted, optimistic, "I can do better than my parents!" ones who end up with kids they can't handle. They end up with a responsibility they never understood the magnitude of until it's too late to get out of it and then they say with astonishment, "Parenting is really hard!" Well, no shit.

However, unlike the poster you're responding to I don't feel that having a child is irresponsible because of the public school system. I believe it's immoral because there are so many millions of orphans in the world, that if you want to raise a child selecting from that pool is the only moral option.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[interkin3tic]

A generation of young people who don't know which way is up and which way is down is a tyrant's wet dream, for they will be needy and dependent and that's always been the ticket to real power... You don't think this, the side effects it will have, or the fact it comes from government is one great big accident do you? It's not so much a carefully planned conspiracy.

Tyrants these days don't really thinking that far in advance though. I mean, these kids are what, 10 years from voting? Why bother teaching them complacency when they'll just be someone else's serfs?

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. The school officials are trying to teach kids to be followers because they're easier to manage then and there. And also because making a test that is correct is harder.

No arguments here though that this will make them more sheeplike to government orders, but it's a happy accident for our future overlords, not by design I think.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[DeadCatX2]

I went to a public school. In fact, I was even attacked unprovoked. Some kid punched me in the face, twice, and I shoved him away so he couldn't hit me anymore before going straight to the office (and then the nurse, because my face was all bloody). I got suspended just like he did. So I know exactly what you're trying to talk about.

But my public school rocked. My teachers were awesome and I learned a great deal from them. No one ever pushed their beliefs onto me, and instead I was given an opportunity to learn a wide variety of topics.

My fiance went to a private school growing up. Her parents blew tens of thousands of dollars so that she could be indoctrinated with beliefs that she knew were bullshit even at that young age.

So forgive me if I don't buy your whole "public schools suck" spiel. Any time the public school is shitty, it's because the folks who live in that district don't want to or can't afford to pay enough in property taxes to afford good teachers.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[JWSmythe]

No, the most important lesson here is that authority can and should be challenged.

    I agree totally.

    I happened to have survived the Florida educational system, although many years ago. The examples given were not only in the FCAT tests, but virtually every standardized test, as well as teacher generated and rehashed tests.

    Some teachers were (and I assume still are) really good about listening to the *student* and re-evaluating the accuracy of the test. With those teachers, when challenged and provided with an accurate review of the question and answers, where it could be shown that more than one answer is the correct one, the teacher would re-grade the tests and change the question for next year. With those teachers, when the circumstances presented themselves, I would turn a C grade to an A, because my answers were already correct.

    Some teachers passed it off with "use the *best* answer if there are more than one which are correct." Best answer for who? The teacher apparently, so they didn't have to consider that their test was flawed.

    And some teachers (the majority) were just plain dumb as rocks and honestly were glorified babysitters. They would say "that's what the book says, it has to be right." Usually, those teachers didn't know or care about the material, and the sessions were typically "read these chapters", and then hand out photocopies of the test from the teachers edition of the book. It seemed this was preferred over actually discussing the topics with the students, where they could get feedback from a real person.

      I'm surprised more people don't just quit school. There is some point where you simply won't learn any more, or you'll realize that the material being presented to you is just wrong.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[NeverSuchBefore]

While I think it's true that there are some public schools that are better than others, most, if not all of them, still rely on varying degrees of rote memorization and teaching to the test. Sure, some people are still able to learn, but it's not a very good way to teach. No Child Left Behind just makes things worse in that regard.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Surt]

Adopting orphans just makes the problem worse in the long run unless you're willing to sterilize them upon adoption. It's immoral to contribute to the situation. Better to breed your own children to compete with the orphans for resources if you want that situation to change.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[HapSlappy_2222]

I don't see where his "fallacious excuse" was. I also don't see where he said he was "beyond reproach of any non-parent". All I saw him say was most parents are doing the best they can, it's unfair for a non-parent (I think this should say "anyone", actually) to make "if you really loved your kids you'd do X, Y, or Z.... " arguments, and that raising kids is much, much different than you'd think it is prior to actually attempting it.

As for your arguments:

1) "... being able to properly provide for them." According to what standard? I provide the best I can for my kids, and I think I do a good job. You may not think so, others may think I give to much, and still others think any child not getting at least a Yale-level college fund is getting neglected. Your standards are not my standards, and if you want some kids to fit into your worldview go have your own.

2) "Parenting is really hard!". I disagree with both you and the GP. It's not hard - it's easy. The hard part, as with anything worthwhile and long term, is the consistency. If you're consistent with your parenting, everything else tends to fall in line. Maybe I lucked out with awesome kids; or maybe they're awesome because I'm consistent. Either way; I look forward to raising my kids into full adulthood from mid-teenage years, and look back fondly on my successes and failures.

3) "selecting from that pool [of orphans] is the only moral option." I've never understood this argument. I get what you're trying to say; namely "there are enough great kids out there already; why make your own?" but that's kind of a dumb argument when you remove the "starving, lonely kids" aspect. Why make your own furniture when there's plenty of furniture to buy from Ikea (obviously kids are not furniture, but the difference is one of - admittedly vast - scale)? Well, in both cases, because I made them, they come from me directly. There's a huge over-supply of starving kids, for sure, and I'm very sorry, but I don't have the 50 grand to adopt another child, nor would it prevent me from wanting my own child with my own genes if I did. Make those people start taking care of their kids (or stop having them in the first place) before you tell me I can't have kids myself. This may seem an immoral stance to you, but it's the same kind of "immoral" as not sending every penny you earn to the orphans in Africa, or sending your paychecks directly to Sara McLachlin. I help how I'm able, and it's on me, not you, to decide how much I should be helping. Besides, by your logic, YOU are the perfect person to adopt all the children you can afford to, since obviously know how to parent better than other parents do, especially if you are not currently encumbered with your own.

The rest of your post I don't really take issue to, other than a general tone of contempt, to which you are entitled.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[jedwidz]

Disagree that parenting is inherently a hard job.

The bar is set very low - you join the parenting club just by following your instincts, and after that the legal requirements for parenting aren't at all onerous.

Just make sure that the kids have a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, and no awkward bruises or breakages, and you're pretty much in the clear. You don't need a job, and you don't need to teach them jack. If your kids grow up to be lazy, stupid, obnoxious, criminal and/or bankrupt, that's not your problem.

Good parenting may be hard, but that depends on what standard of 'good' you set yourself as a parent. If you think parenting is hard because you hold yourself to high standards and care about the outcomes of your parenting, I'm with you on that.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Anonymous Coward]

Never raised a child, I see.

If you had, you'd know that kids who do bad stuff are not proof of bad parenting. It's an indicator, but not one that is as strong as you might think. For that matter, having kids who are great is not proof of good parenting. There are plenty of bad people from good families/parents and plenty of good people from bad families/parents. What you learn if you raise a child -- or especially if you raise a few of them -- is that they show up with their own personalities and they make their own decisions. Parents can teach them, and guide them, or parents can ignore them, and abuse them, but what the kids ultimately do is at least as much about them as it is about their environment.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Penguinisto]

If what you claim were true, everyone would hold teachers in high esteem.

...you mean like how every time something goes 'bump' in the school budget, the teachers are the first to be held up as the martyrs? You name the political campaign, budgeting debate, or what-have-you, it's always the same old spiel about how the poor teachers need less students, more money, etc.

Now here's the kicker: In any school, the teachers are the minority. Here's an extreme sample: When I taught, there were 210 employees of the (tech school, then state collegiate) campus, but only 42 faculty. Yep... forty-two actual teachers on a huge campus. The other 168 employees were administrators, student counselors, janitors, student aid, IT staff, Accounts (Payable|Receiving), fundraising/income specialists, marketing specialists, accountants, special-ed workers (not teachers), program managers, facilities (landscaping, electrical, plumbing, etc), curriculum specialists, bookstore staff, certification specialists (that keep track of teachers' certification requirements), legal staff (you betcha), receptionists, school district liaisons, high school (AP course) liaisons, cafeteria staff, union reps/shop stewards, a staff psychologist, nursing/medical staff, public relations staff, and assorted other positions.

In most other schools, the same ratio holds... about 20-30% of a given school's employees are actual teachers. Sometimes that drifts up to 40%, but only in rare cases.

OTOH, whenever a school budget is argued over, who gets thought of first? It ain't all those other positions I listed up there - just the teachers.

The problem ain't the teachers per se (though an amazing number are incompetent beyond belief, yet the NEA would go ballistic and threaten a general strike if you tried to fire the bad ones). The problem is this monster army of administrators and middle-management that swallows any given school budget, leaving damned little for the actual teachers. Now I'm not talking about the janitors and IT folks, but the massive percentage of paper-pushers, make-work positions (usually granted as political favors), curriculum specialists, and all the bloat that a typical school district carries on its ledger.

Trust me - it can stand a LOT of improvement, and having it run by an unaccountable, spend-happy, typically corrupt-as-hell city/state government agency? Umm, yeah.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Alex Belits]

Why is this shit up to the teacher in the first place?

The whole point of multiple choice test is to reduce the amount of work performed by the teacher and allow less intelligent people to become teachers. When I studied in a far superior public education system, multiple choice tests were banned, and teachers were supposed to evaluate every answer individually, however all teachers were also supposed to pass the same course and use the same curriculum and textbooks -- no skipping chapters because teacher is too stupid to teach it.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[AK Marc]

And I think you are wrong. I was 37 when I had my first. My sister started 5 years before me. I was happy to give her advice, which she spouted the "you haven't had kids, you don't understand" response. I didn't think about it until our after second kid and my mother asked if it was what I though it was and if I was following the advice I had given my sister.

Well, I was following my own advice, and it worked great. Yeah, I gave parenting advice when I had no kids. It was good advice, and now that I'm a parent, my advice is worse (rather than giving what "should" work, I give more of what "did" work, much more limited in scope and usefulness), but I'm treated as being more authoritative. It works *exactly* the way I thought it would. That's a basic lesson in life.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Homr Zodyssey]

I had a young single coworker say to me once, "I understand how parents feel now that I have a dog".

I asked, "Oh yeah? Where's your dig right now?"

He responded, "At home, in his cage."

I chuckled, "They'd put me in jail if I left my son at home, alone, in a cage."

Parenting is a hell of a lot more than cooking extra food or owning a pet.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Dare nMc]

>folks who live in that district don't want to or can't afford to pay enough in property taxes to afford good teachers.

I agree up until that part. The teachers are probably fine, if they had the right support. If the school has a winning sports team, and no robotics team, then it is clear the parents, admin, alum have set the priorities, and they are maximizing that success. If you went to more HS basketball matches, than robotic competitions your showing the kids who you idolize more. No one would blame a coach for a loosing team with no players, and no interested parents. But everyone blames the school/teachers when few kids are going to the harder math classes... We have are priorities in this USA, and it does not appear to be academics and engineers we are counting on to take us into the future.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[rtb61]

That problem is quite easily remediable. Quite simply take schools from local government budgets and shift them to state budgets. Each state would need only 1 administrative body to administer all schools in that state and to establish curricula for the whole state. Double plus benefit here, is the Federal department of education can be reduced not eliminated, as it would still be required to ensure all the states align the education so grade equivalence is maintained and the curricula is sufficiently similar (it provides the meeting place for the fifty states to discuss education) and federal funding would be hugely simplified, needing only to go to fifty different organisations.

Of course this will be next to impossible to achieve due to every bum hicksville town believing from the gut religious thinking is the best way to manage education and who cares what the rest of the country does.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Homr Zodyssey]

Rush Limbaugh's Rules:
#1 Be an asshole.
#2 ...
#3 Profit!
#4 Take lots of pills for fun
#5 Piss off women every chance I get.
#6 The world is governed by the aggressive use of force.

Wow...that last one just doesn't seem to fit with the rest.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[OrigamiMarie]

In some states, it doesn't matter much what the residents of a given school district are willing to pay. It all gets funneled into the state coffers, and distributed evenly amongst all districts. So the quality of local schools has little to do with how much the local taxpayers care about the schools.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[RazorSharp]

if you haven't actually DONE what you are preaching that others should, then it doesn't work like you think it will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Fallacious_appeals_to_authority

The argument is a fallacious appeal from authority because he claims that one must be a parent to understand what it means to be a good parent. It reminds me of our current paradox of politicians. Everyone thinks politicians are rotten but no one wants to vote for someone with no experience in politics. Experience in politics seems to me to have nothing to do with how good one is as a politician just as experience in parenting has nothing to do with how good a parent is. Maybe, with the second child, Jessica Crackwhore knows some tricks that makes it easier on her. But she's still a bad parent when Child #2 doesn't graduate and ends up in prison at age 18.

The quoted sentence is also a non-sequitur because it is possible for something to work like you think it will even if you haven't done it.

Regarding your stance: Kids aren't furniture. My argument may be dumb if you remove the "starving and lonely" part but until some magician steps up and waves his magic wand that fills the bellies of orphans around the world and provides them with responsible and resourceful caretakers, "starving and lonely" remains an irrevocable truth. I think it's selfish that anyone could love one human more than another because they share the same genes.

This may come as a surprise to you, but it's not about my standards or your standards. Morality is objective. My moral standards may be incorrect but they're certainly not subjective. It's not up to me to determine how much you help but doesn't invalidate my opinion on the matter. Why it it so outrageous to tell someone, "If you really loved your kids you wouldn't blow cigarette smoke in their faces"? What's unfair about that? If you really love someone, you wouldn't purposefully harm them. I don't have to be a parent to arrive at that conclusion.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Penguinisto]

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. :( )

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Surt]

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.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[buybuydandavis]

Everyone thinks politicians are rotten but no one wants to vote for someone with no experience in politics.

Untrue. Not everyone wants a professional ruling class. Lots of people prefer to vote for someone with no *government* experience, and lots more want term limits. Just not enough, in both cases.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Lost Race]

I'm a parent, I understand, and I agree with both RazorSharp and causality. I sympathize with digitallife but I've found that the parenting advice of experienced parents is every bit as useless, unworkable, and inappropriate as that of the childless. Most parents are pretty crappy at parenting. What they're good at is compromising ideals and rationalizing inadequacies.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Omestes]

Morality is objective.

Damn you, you made me undo mod points with that phrase. How is morality objective? There are TONS of variants of what is moral out there, so how can you claim it is objective. Morality is an opinion, yes, and some opinions are more commonly held than others, but it is still an opinion. Opinions aren't objective. You BELIEVE your morality, but that still doesn't make it objective, it is still an opinion.

It's not up to me to determine how much you help but doesn't invalidate my opinion on the matter.

But it does, for him. He doesn't agree with your opinion, thus for him your opinion is invalid. I don't agree with your morality here, and thus, to me, it is completely invalid. You can live with it, your can think it is valid as the day is long, but that doesn't make it universal. It doesn't make it magically objective.

Further, I'm sick of people saying that "appeal to authority is a fallacy, this your argument is automatically invalid", that too is a fallacy. If the soul basis of argument is "authority", then it is a fallacy, but claiming authority in itself isn't. I'm sorry, this guy is a parent, thus he is an authority, and thus he probably DOES know more about child rearing (at least the nuts and bolts of it) than I, a non-parent, does. I'm going to weigh his opinions more than yours on that topic. Just like I'm going to weigh a cosmologists opinions on the functioning of the universe over that of a television personality, or the Time Cube guy. Yes, if your follow up was true, you might be correct on your appeal to Wikipedia, but I didn't see what you saw.

Further, my parents were awesome, and yet I got in a shit-ton of trouble as a kid. Hell, I dropped out of high school, got hooked on drugs, and made more than my share of terrible decisions. I only managed to pull through thanks to the background my parents gave me, and their forgiveness and patience. I'm sick of this "blame the parents" bullshit, kids have free will, circumstances have pull, and peer groups are a bitch, these are just as important as parents once kids enter the real world. "Blame the parents" is overly simplistic, there are huge webs of causes and effects out there. Yes, there are bad parents, but there also are good parents with wild children. This has always been true, and always will be true.

I think it's selfish that anyone could love one human more than another because they share the same genes.

If only someone would write a book about that!

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[parliboy]

I teach at a school that is more teacher-heavy than that. 3 to 4 teachers per core area, plus languages, technology, and other electives. Compare this to two admins, one counselor, 5 office staff (one of whom took over my technology responsibilities to give me cover), and 4 custodians / plant operators. The district's curriculum specialists were shown the door.

It used to be even more teacher-heavy for awhile, but a prior administration tried to add more non-teaching positions in order to solidify power. After that administration left, we found a ... Happy medium.

It is possible to have a teacher-driven school, but it means committing to more hats than just teaching. In my case, I handle admissions scoring and course registration, as well as other issues that would normally require additional office staff.

That's the big rub of this. There are things that have to be done to keep a campus functioning. If teachers want more power, they have to assume these responsibilities, and they have to defend them, lest the school become too office-heavy. But very often, teachers (on both a personal and union level) have often taken a position of "We aren't required to do that; go away." So that position is one of the things that has caused teachers to lose power over the years.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Eskarel]

Children are not machines, they are people.

Every single one of them is different(well I don't know about twins as I have no experience with twins). This is the bit which every single non parent fails to understand. A child, from a very young age, is a person with free will and their own personality. They can and do make their own decisions, from the age of 18 months or even younger. You can provide an example to your child, you can use you power over them to force them to do certain things, but that's really about it. You can no more force a two year old to think a certain way than you can a 30 year old, you can make him or her go to daycare, make them put on clothes, but you can do that because you have physical power over them. Sometimes good parents raise shitty kids. Sometimes shitty parents raise good kids. Sometimes a technique that for one kid helps them to achieve all their dreams stunts the growth of another.

Sure there are some general rules like not blowing smoke into your kids face, but for the most part parenting is a matter of patience and faith. You try to be the best role model you can be, you have the patience to love them even when they fail and you have faith, sometimes unrewarded, that they will turn out, at the very least, a little bit better than you did. All the rest of it is bullshit dreamed up by middle aged men who have never had kids or based on some parent's experiences that worked for their particular kid. No non parent ever understands this, they think that you have a kid, you perform actions A, B, and C for 20 years and then out comes a functional adult. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

As for the whole orphans thing, there's reasonable evidence showing that pulling some kid out of their native country and raising them with no sense of their heritage or background can be damaging. Most foster kids are already so horrendously damaged that it takes more than most people have in them to try and turn that around.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[mmortal03]

Here's my argument referring to what you said would be acceptable authorities on morality being objective: "One study found that most philosophers today accept or lean towards moral realism, as do most meta-ethicists, and twice as many philosophers accept or lean towards moral realism as accept or lean towards moral anti-realism." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[TheRaven64]

It may start with a Slashdot post, but pretty soon there's a Facebook group, and then there's nothing you can do except issue a content-free pacifying press release.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[cffrost]

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.

An intriguing idea... Can you imagine if these cuckoo-kids began adapting by dumping the parents' own children out of the "nest?"

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[hairyfish]

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.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[Lurker2288]

How much food do you eat a day? Because with so many starving people in the world, the only moral option is to cut yourself down to starvation rations and give the surplus to the needy.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[JWSmythe]

    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.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[phlinn]

No Child Left Behind legally prohibits teachers from doing their job. Period.

Please explain. My default response was that you are wrong, and I have some familiartiy with this law. Maybe I've missed something though. It was a poor attempt to fix the end result of poorly crafted government incentives instead of fixing the incentives, and is flawed in numerous ways, but it doesn't actually prohibit teachers from teach AFAIK.

Even as written, it could have been implemented better. Instead of tracking, say, 5th graders from year to year to guage AYP, schools could have grouped students by year of starting school and retired groups from tracking when the numbers got too low. Which would have been far more sensible as you'd mostly be comparing the same kids to the same kids, and could show progress no matter how bad the students were as long each student was improving from year to year. That was a suggestion I heard back when it was being debated, but of course no one actually does it that way. Could have missed a clause in there, I've only skimmed the thing.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[MozeeToby]

You want some real advice?

#1 Love your kids.
#2 Do the best you can.
#3 Do what feels right to you and your family.

And I'm not just being a jackass, each of those points comes from 2 different directions and that's something a lot of people don't get.

Most parents get #1 pretty easily the day their kids are born but, and this is something no one likes to talk about, not everyone feels an instant connection to their newborn. If you don't feel it don't panic. The first days, weeks, and months are an emotional and hormonal roller coaster ride (yes, for both parents), you'll get there eventually if you stay involved.

#2 seems obvious too, just work your hardest right? But it goes the other way, don't try to force more out of yourself than your able to give. That means asking for and accepting help when you need it, it means letting the mess pile up in the kitchen so you can sleep for an extra half hour, it even means taking time for yourself every now and then so you don't go insane. In extreme cases, it means setting your crying baby in the crib and walking away for 10 minutes if it gets to be too much.

And #3, probably the only piece of 'real' advice out of the three. You don't have to follow other people's advice (not even mine)! Don't let anyone tell you how to be a parent. There's a million right ways to raise a child, and most of them can the the wrong way to raise a child just as easily so you may as well do it the way that feels right to you. You've got millions of years of parenting instincts living up in your brain, if advice contradicts those don't ignore it and blindly follow what someone is telling you. That doesn't mean don't read up on things, or solicit advice, or listen when your mother tells you how she used to do it, it just means don't feel like a bad parent if you don't want to follow them.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[HapSlappy_2222]

I think that if your point was accurate, we'd have no further need for college ethics classes (which teach a wide variety of viewpoints and theories on morality) nor would we need nearly as many cops, jails, and courts.

Like Hitler, most of the bad people in the world are pretty good at justifying to themselves why doing a thing isn't bad. So many people rationalize their own actions away, and morality is a construct of society (albeit a very, very important one).

I can even counter your examples directly (I don't necessarily believe any these positions; just showing that in ethics there is always an opposing viewpoint that someone can contrive, silly as they might be, and this is why ethics are so commonly argued, but 2 + 2 = 4 isn't): Stealing - what if my family's starving to death? Child Abuse - locking a kid up is child abuse, but what if he kills another kid and gets stuck in a cell? Killing defenseless people - what if they are harboring war criminals and refuse to move out of the way? Rape - some cultures initiate marriages this way, and some men systematically rape their women for the duration of the relationship (unless you consider "just plain giving up on life" as the woman's consent).

We think many things others do are wrong, but they think WE are wrong to "allow" our women to be educated or don't wear enough clothing or that we don't wear super long beards or that we value individualism over collectivism or about a trillion other things. Obviously you and I believe certain things, and being in the same culture, most of our morality is likely similar, but yes, other cultures truly believe other things as strongly as we believe ours. If you go to another culture, YOU are in the wrong based on sheer numbers (this is also why I don't go to stupid shitty pig fucker cultures, and I'm comfortable judging the ever living shit out of them, much to my old sociology professor's chagrin).

The point is, you cannot be absolutely "right" or "wrong" in all ethical quandaries, though it's helpful to have a guide, which would only work when stated in absolute terms. So, you can easily state things in general terms, but, as is the norm for sweeping statements, you still have to take an individual situation and decide based on that individual situation's merits, although in ethics, starting from a solid bias can actually be a good thing; it saves shit tons of time, that's for sure.

Generally speaking, there are many schools of thought on how to make ethical decisions and belief systems. You can do the thing that provides the most utility (Utilitarian), provides the greater good to all (Altruism), provides the greatest pleasure with least pain (Hedonism's original form), simply go for pleasure only (Cyrenaicism; what most think of as Hedonism), and about a thousand more; and it's trivially easy to rationalize every single act you commit, good or bad. This is why ethical considerations are very much a societal agreement and don't come from a genetic stamp, and it's why morals in different cultures can vary so much, and also why cultures can change moral views over time (which is also a VERY good thing; ethical considerations tend to need resolution prior to progress).

Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate" talks about this, and many other things, far, far better than I could ever attempt to. I strongly recommend it.

Re:The most important lesson in life being taught

[yurtinus]

- Potty training: check
- Encouraging appropriate social interaction: check
- Teaching to fetch the newspaper: check

I really don't see the difference...

No child left...

[Anonymous Coward]

...educated.

Common Misconceptions

[KalvinB]

You have to realize that teachers teach those misconceptions so they can pretend to teach a particular concept when other essential prior knowledge has not been covered yet. This happens a lot in math as well. For example we covered a problem that could be solved without the mid-point formula but the mid-point formula drastically reduced the complexity. Most teachers would just find a way to fudge it. I went ahead and taught the midpoint formula.

It really is up for debate how much a kid and handle and if we should teach all the essentials or just give them a few hacks so we can teach other parts of the whole. Personally I despise teaching misconceptions but I haven't been around long enough to say conclusively it's not necessary. I just haven't found a particular case yet where it is.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[forkfail]

If you read TFA, you'll find that this isn't assuming that student's won't know something yet - it is defining a predator as an organism that gets its nutrients from consuming another organism (meaning a cow is a predictor).

And even if it was the first, consider the impact on anyone with an advanced-for-their-age understanding, and the impact on them. It knocks down their confidence in their budding intelligence, reduces to the least common denominator.

No, this is wrong in every way, and not defensible.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[repapetilto]

They should just have different questions then...

Re:Common Misconceptions

[UnknowingFool]

I read the article and it seems to me that the practice test has major flaws in that those who wrote the practice tests were not precise. The definitions were off. The 3 of 4 example was one where the student of asked which of the 4 was testable:

1. The petals of red roses are softer than the petals of yellow roses.
2. The song of a mockingbird is prettier than the song of a cardinal.
3. Orange blossoms give off a sweeter smell than gardenia flowers.
4. Sunflowers with larger petals attract more bees than sunflowers with smaller petals.

Softness is a physical property you can test. Sweetness when it comes to aromas is a chemical response. And size vs bee attraction is also testable. What the question intends is which of these is most plausible when it comes to cause and effect which the right answer is 4. 1 and 3 are right due to the way the question was asked.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[tolkienfan]

There is no excuse. When there is a multiple choice question where only one choice is allowed, (like most standardized tests), all correct answers should be counted as correct. If there are answers that are correct for subtle reasons, either put alternate (more obvious) incorrect choices, or allow them as alternative correct answers.
No debate is necessary.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[GodInHell]

My favorite story of ignorant "science" teachers from growing up, test question: Do plants produce or consume oxygen? Answer - both, produce in photosynthesis, consume in resparation. Graded wrong with a note: plants don't respire!!
sigh.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[93 Escort Wagon]

If you read TFA, you'll find that this isn't assuming that student's won't know something yet - it is defining a predator as an organism that gets its nutrients from consuming another organism (meaning a cow is a predator).

They're just trying to teach critical thinking - getting young minds to consider alternative points of view. In this instance, for example, they want the students to look at things from the point of view of the grass!

(also, FTFY)

Re:Common Misconceptions

[repapetilto]

Really you can test subjective qualities like prettiness as well.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[Milyardo]

The misconception this question enforces is stronger than that. 1 and 3 attempt compare the the measurement of physical properties while number 4 is a behavioural observation that can only be measured through correlation. Numbers 1 and 3 can be proven to be fact through measurement while number can only be a hypothesis(that can only be proven with a causation or disproven with a observation that states otherwise). From the TFA the purpose of the question is asses the student's ability to discern opinion/interpretation from a scientific observation. While number is undoubtedly a scientific observation, asserting number 4 is true after observation is still an opinion/interpretation, making it a poor choice to assert that student has a clear understanding of the difference between opinion and fact.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[wisty]

In multiple choice questions, the "most correct" answer is the right one. Otherwise, all answers can be correct, if you argue hard enough (if it's at all subjective).

The problem is, they used a stupid question - you can scientifically test the "softness" or "sweetness" of a flower. There should be one that's obviously "most correct".

For in-class quizzes, it's not so important (as the student can challenge it), but for a state-wide test there shouldn't be any wriggle room.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[amicusNYCL]

The response to his questions was pretty telling also. The official agreed with the science, that 3 of the answers were testable, but he said that students who learned about mineral hardness couldn't be expected to realize that applied to other materials, and that students couldn't be expected to realize that you can use a chromatograph (or anything else) to test the qualities of a smell.

The obvious solution is to choose other properties that are actually non-testable instead of list testable properties and assume the students won't know, but they refused to change those responses.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[repapetilto]

I remember one that was something like this:

Mushroom: Plant as _______: Animal

A: Cat
B: Pizza
C: Rock
D: Table

I guessed the "Correct" answer was A. Really those tests were full of questions like this.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[cpt kangarooski]

Don't kid yourself Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!

Re:Common Misconceptions

[Obfuscant]

Softness is a physical property you can test.

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. What scale do you use?

Sweetness when it comes to aromas is a chemical response.

For many decades, scientists have told us that sodium saccharine is a "sweetener". Sorry, not to me it isn't. It tastes horrible, not sweet. Women pay lots of money for perfumes that smell "sweet". To me, many of them smell bad and even repulsive. The only Axe version I ever thought smelled good was the chocolate one.

Yes, you can use a chromatograph to analyze the chemical makeup of something, and then say that "because it contains X it will smell sweet". That's based on someone actually smelling X at some point in time and saying "X smells sweet", and then smelling Y and saying "X smells sweeter than Y" -- an opinion. But the chromatograph cannot smell. If you give it a chemical that you've not analyzed before (and thus cannot identify), the chromatograph won't tell you how it will smell.

You MIGHT be able to use NMR or other methods to determine the chemical structure and say "because it has a structure similar to X, it should smell sweet", but the NMR isn't measuring "sweetness", it is measuring structure. And it certainly won't tell you "sweeter".

Ok, you get ten people together and have them smell orange blossoms. That's a scientific test for sweet smelling, right? No, it's still their opinion. Someone may like gardenia more than orange.

Now, if you are going to these extremes to attempt to get a scientificatlly testable answer to "soft" and "sweet", why not "pretty"? Feed the bird songs to a program that identifies music (SoundHound, e.g.) and see which misidentified commercial product is higher on the charts -- it must be "prettier" than the other, right? Well, that's how I'm defining "pretty" so I can test it scientifically.

And size vs bee attraction is also testable.

That's the only one. "More bees" is objective. "Sweet" and "pretty" and "soft" are subjective. They need human input from the start. "More" is a well defined concept that doesn't have regional or social differences.

1 and 3 are right due to the way the question was asked.

One and three are wrong the way the question was asked, and because it takes some convoluted means to make them even close to testable ("smell" is a function of the nose; apply a chromatograph and you're using second best tools) four is still the best answer. That's the "right" answer for any test -- the most correct answer. By the time someone gets to fifth grade, "most correct answer" should be derigour.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[Just Some Guy]

In multiple choice questions, the "most correct" answer is the right one.

What's the next number in the series [2, 3, 5, 8]?

1. 13 (Fibonacci style: 2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13)
2. 12 (Incrementing by increasing integers: 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 2 = 5, 5 + 3 = 8, 8 + 4 = 12)

Of those, which is objectively "most correct"?

For various reasons, I ended up taking an IQ test a while back. The number of unobviously "most correct" answers almost drove me nuts. For a definition of "IQ" meaning "comes up with the same answer as the test author because of similar thought processes", it was great. For "IQ" meaning "able to infer patterns in the world around themselves", it sucked.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[Relayman]

A mushroom is not a plant, so the relationship is "the first item is similar to the second but not a member of it." Since a cat is an animal, A is wrong. Since of the three left, only a rock is not manmade, so I say the the correct answer is C. But that's a poor question for a test.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[jd]

When it was found that the British GCSE examiners were marking salt as something you couldn't melt, it was considered a national disaster and the media ripped the examining authorities a new one.

In Florida, marking something that scientists test everyday as untestable is more likely to get you a promotion and a hefty bonus.

Standardized exams are EVIL and worthless (exams should be tailored to as small a group as practical and should test that group's ability to acquire and understand knowledge, it's the only way you can establish anything of value) but standardized exams that are also factually wrong should be burned at the stake. There is no excuse for them. Ever.

It doesn't matter what the examiner "expects" the students to know. A "C" grade should be what you "expect" the students to know. "A" should be reserved for people who know things you DIDN'T expect them to know. If you run out of grade letters, as the UK's A-level group did when they added A* to the mix, then that's for people who know things you didn't even know yourself.

If you restrict people to boxes, expect them to have boxes for brains when they leave school. Maybe that works "just fine" in everglade country in the middle of a recession, but it should still not be acceptable. Anywhere. Ever.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[lgw]

A measure is still scientifically testable as long as it's quantitative and repeatable. There are plenty of survey-based scientific measures in the soft sciences. It may look like BS, but if anyone can do the same data collection and get the same result, it's a scientific measure.

Also, "sweet taste" is very well studied and quite quantifyable (it's the result of specific chemical reactions, after all); I don't know about "sweet smell" but it might be as well.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[digitig]

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.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[repapetilto]

Right, but in the context of the test, I figured the most likely explanation for that question was that the person making it thought mushrooms were plants.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[EdwinFreed]

No, the correct answer is B. Mushroom vs. plant is a living thing vs. a group of living things this specific living thing isn't in. Rocks and tables aren't alive. Pizza, on the other hand, can be, if the old one I found in our refrigerator the other day is any indication.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[Sperbels]

Human thought and emotion, by definition, is outside the realm of scientific inquiry.

The term used here is is testable. You can survey people to ask them if something is pretty. Prettiness has no definition beyond human thought, so it's implied that this is the only way to test it.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

These questions are a good way of testing social intelligence. Really smart kids often need to ask themselves "how dumb is the person I'm talking to right now?" and engage them accordingly.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[jbeaupre]

In my wife's school district, practice tests are usually generated from questions that were rejected from the official test. The point being to practice taking the test using questions that don't matter (your don't assess kids using practice tests), and save the good questions for official tests.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[nbauman]

Don't ever take a law school admissions test. In the example booklet I read, every question was wrong, and you had to pick the least wrong answer. That's the way it was supposed to be. Legal thinking is like that. Don't be surprised that the Supreme Court figured out a way to give the election to GWB.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[SomeKDEUser]

You think wrong :)

If you think in terms of relationships between the organisms, and how their populations fluctuates dynamically, then the cow is a predator to grass. If the cows eat too much grass, they die out.

This is not completely true, as the cow grazing does not kill the grass: it will regrow. So ok, the cow is not a real predator to grass. Not like foxes and rabbits.

This is different from the athletes foot: this is a parasitic relationship: the parasite takes some of the hosts resources for himself. If he takes too much, he dies with his host.

But the bigger point is that clearly the students are not taught to think in terms of models and theories. And this is what id deeply wrong -- never mind that the test's question be inane.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[formfeed]

The misconception this question enforces is stronger than that. 1 and 3 attempt compare the the measurement of physical properties while number 4 is a behavioural observation that can only be measured through correlation.

But so is 2: Studying human behavior, "The song of a mockingbird is prettier than the song of a cardinal." means "More humans will assign the term 'pretty' to the vocalization of a mocking bird than to that of a cardinal." Which, for someone studying human behavior, might be an interesting observation.

What makes this question double-dumb is the superficial understanding of science behind it: Science should never be about our emotions, feelings, passions. That's what these kids have to understand. The question is designed to weed out the kids who can't switch that part of, when doing science: "Bird song", "pretty" No, that can't be the right answer, any kid who falls for that doesn't belong in science.

First of all, social science, psychology , etc. go exactly for that kind of question. The scientific mind there is: Wow, this seems prettier, I wonder why, is it cultural, could I test that...

And second even in the hard science, it's passion that sparks the motivation.

(Would be interesting to see how questions like that de-select girls.)

Re:Common Misconceptions

[tftp]

Can even do it scientifically, if you're using an fMRI

Or a measuring tape.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[AK Marc]

A pizza, a rock, and a cat.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[jd]

That depends on whether you want a direct comparison of knowledge. You want to see if they meet the minimum requirements of the course, but after that what matters is surely their raw ability to learn. You don't get that information off a standardized test, you can only get that from specialized testing. Standardized tests only tell you how good the student is at that syllabus, which means that you'll get identical scores for someone who reached that level when they were half the age and have learned vastly more and those who didn't learn it all. Those who are average to mediocre will actually score the highest, but the reason universities have exceptionally high drop-out rates is that average-to-mediocre just won't cut it. Not at that level.

However, what about the gifted kids, the ones who have forgotten more than the rest ever knew? Because they are capable of learning faster and more independently, they are prime university candidates, the IDEAL people to have. Yet they will score average or even below average on any standardized test -- precisely because they know more and therefore answer better than the examiner anticipated.

The correct testing strategy is to ALWAYS have the ones you want most score the most. The ones you want most, above all, are the ones who will be getting first class honors and be continuing on to get their PhDs. It is extremely doubtful that many of those will do well in SATs, which is in part why Oxford and Cambridge traditionally set their own specialized tests (long-answer format, replete with fascinating and bizarre questions) and allowed you to score whatever you wanted in the national standardized exams if you did well at their specialized quizzes. They wanted the people who actually WERE the best, not merely the best at answering multiple-choice tests.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you should see medical board certification examinations. I had the infuriating opportunity/requirement to sit for the American Board of Pediatrics exam last year. An hour into it, I wanted to pull my hair out, precisely because it was full of things like this. For example, one question required you to believe that MRSA was not a common cause of abscesses in children and that MSSA was the predominant pathogen, and that therefore Keflex was a more appropriate choice that clindamycin. When the hell was the question written, 1995?

The "most correct" excuse that test makers use is criminally wrong. If you ask a multiple choice question, then you must accept ALL correct answers. For example, for the above you need to *say* that it's MSSA in the wound instead of MRSA. Instead, they require that you infer from whatever data/experience *THEY* have in their control community that it's MSSA and not MRSA. In many places, that simply isn't the case. I've seen one abscess in 18 months that was MSSA; the rest were either MRSA or something rare. So if I assume MRSA, then I am making a good medical decision and it does not mean that I don't know what I'm doing or that I provide "inferior" care.

It is amazing to me that lawsuits aren't flying all over the place against tests like this. (And in the case of the medical boards, for massive Smith Anti-Trust Act violations, unfair restriction of trade, etc.)

Re:Common Misconceptions

[dunkelfalke]

You confuse "sweet" and "tastes good". Two different things altogether. I cannot stand honey, gagging from the taste alone. But it does taste sweet. Just also repulsive.

Re:Common Misconceptions

[wrook]

This actually reminds me of a question I put on an English test (for Japanese students):

Mary doesn't each meat, fish or eggs. Mary only eats plants. What is Mary?

My student answered "cow". I think I gave him bonus points.

Science is just voodoo magic anyway.

[forkfail]

Good for making the magic iBoxes work so I can watch porn, but not so much for anything important, like resource utilization or climate modeling. And anyway, math is hard. Who needs it when you can just be a landscaper or stripper anyway?

Re:Science is just voodoo magic anyway.

[Beardo the Bearded]

Or good landscapers... ...which may or may nor be the same person.

Re:Science is just voodoo magic anyway.

[roc97007]

...reminds me of my nephew. He dropped out of his programming classes because "programming is hard". He decided he wanted to be a game tester. I don't think that worked out.

Apropos of your comment, he also wanted to date strippers. To my knowledge none of his attempts ended well.

Re:Science is just voodoo magic anyway.

[Osgeld]

yea or like my cousin who is running a state subsided pot farm, hows that working out for you hippy ... you and your making 5x as much as I am high off your ass listening to original records and living in a picturesque landscape on your own schedule!

I got the last laugh there ... sigh

Excuse me, but what is this?

[sixtyeight]

I've been noticing stories that are covered much like this a lot on Slashdot lately. It's difficult to know whether it's journalism - which reports the facts and allows the reader to reach their own conclusion about them - an editorial piece - which is where blatantly opinion-laden writing is usually found - or tabloid reporting - which purports to be legitimate but is usually written for sensationalism.

I realize that proper journalism went out when political pundits were brought in, but this weird crossbreed of online reporting is becoming a trend.

Re:Excuse me, but what is this?

[Kidbro]

Could you please point me to a place where they have this proper journalism of which you speak?

Re:Excuse me, but what is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You're wrong.

Assuming the author isn't batantly fabricating anything (i.e. the responses from the state) this is fact, not opinion.

If you RTFA the sample questions listed clearly have multiple correct answers and that's the crux of the piece. One could argue that the official answers are "more correct" (e.g. frequency of bee arrivals may be easier to test than the softness of a petal), but the issues documented in the article are real and relevant to the public interest.

Re:Excuse me, but what is this?

[sixtyeight]

This works.

If we can agree that the mainstream news media are no longer opting to practice legitimate journalism, and that many new online reporters do not know how, it doesn't follow that journalistic standards do not exist, or that they're impossible to implement or insist upon. I think it may argue the case in favor of them more strongly.

Re:Excuse me, but what is this?

[LordLimecat]

THe crux of the piece is that they assume that the child wont be able to extrapolate from one area of science (testing hardness) to another, and will penalize the student smart enough to make that extrapolation.

This bugged the heck out of me throughout school, how the standardized tests were ambiguous as hell. I generally knew when I didnt know a concept, but I think more often my wrong answers were because I didnt pick the specific correct answer that the test key had.

It ends up not being a test of knowledge, but who is best at taking test and discerning which particular hoop they want you to jump through (or fill in with a #2 pencil).

Fark has a "Florida Tag" for a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

News stories out of Florida always paint Floridians as stupid, so this is why Fark.com has a special "Florida" tag.

Re:How smart?

[King InuYasha]

Everybody gets this confused. All standardized tests for scholastic purposes measure achievement or potential achievement, not how "smart" someone is. That being said, everyone says that these tests measure how smart you are, which isn't true.

Reminds me of elementary school

[poity]

Teacher was introducing order of operations, and started off by using the incorrect way as an example of what not to do (as in "you solve it this way right? AHA you were WRONG! It's actually this way!) Well, being the smartass who already knew order of operations I jumped the gun had to make it clear to her how wrong that was. Got yelled at for messing up her teaching plan haha

Re:Reminds me of elementary school

[captjc]

I had a similar incident around 3rd or 4th grade about the "3 states of matter". There was a bit of a kerfuffle when I mentioned plasma. It got worse when I later corrected that glass didn't technically fit the classical model of a solid. That is what I get for reading too much...

Re:Reminds me of elementary school

[Nidi62]

While not quite the same thing, I have an interesting anecdote from elementary school as well. By the time I was in the 4th grade, I was already reading books such as Michael Crichton. In 4th grade we used to have to fill out sheets showing what books we were reading. One week I put in that I had read The Lost World. When the teacher returned it to me, she had written on there asking if I wanted help finding "more age appropriate books". I remember our school library had a set of books on the Vietnam War. I must have gone through those 4-5 times as well between 3rd and 5th grade.

Re:Reminds me of elementary school

[reve_etrange]

My teachers got wise to that response so I had to start reminding them about Bose-Einstein condensates.

Re:Reminds me of elementary school

[LordLimecat]

Glass is nevertheless a solid, despite urban myths to the contrary.

Re:Reminds me of elementary school

[slew]

Glass is nevertheless a solid, despite urban myths to the contrary.

And at that level of understanding, plasma is probably best considered as just ionized gas.
Otherwize, you start getting into a categorization/definition game with stuff like bose-einstein condensates, strange-quark-matter, and other weird shit.

Re:Reminds me of elementary school

[bosef1]

I also had a similar incident in 3rd or 4th grade: one of our tests had asked us how many stars were in the Big Dipper. The expected answer was seven. However, I put a larger number, having already learned that several of the "stars" in the Big Dipper are actually binary or larger families. I was appearently very frustrated that I got the question wrong.

Not just florida...

[Lumpy]

In michigan during the 80's I proved a chemistry teacher wrong in the 6th grade. He Flunked me on the test for being "combative" and "not respecting authority". I took it home to my dad and my oldest brother, who worked as a chemist looked at the problem and my answer and said, " you are correct, the teacher is an idiot" and went with my dad to a conference with the teacher asking the principal to be there.

By me saying " no you are wrong", and then saying "NO WAY! THAT"S UNFAIR" I was being combative. my dad ripped into the principal and the teacher for 1 hour. My grade got changed to an A before they left.

A lot of teachers are not teaching but regurgitating what is in the book, and the book was wrong. the teacher was outed as not doing his job and by dad found out he actually was an english major and had only 1 class in chemistry.

Any monkey can regurgitate a book. IT's time we get real teachers in there and fire all the administration that makes retard decisions to have the Phys Ed teacher, to hold the algebra classes because he knows how to use a calculator.

Re:Not just florida...

[forkfail]

If we want good education for our kids (and thus, to maintain our position as an economic world power), there's two things that need be done.

First, hold teachers accountable. As you note, having the tenured gym teacher teach algebra because he can use a calculator must stop.

But the other bit is that we have to pay the true professionals what they're worth. Look at the teachers in the nations that lead on the test scores (Finland, Japan, etc) - they're not only highly respected, they're highly paid.

Re:Not just florida...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't be done in this country currently, the teacher's unions are too much money for the DNC in their current form in order to risk losing some of it by changing things.

You mention holding teacher's accountable. It has been mentioned many time here on /. with hundreds of people explaining how it won't be fair no matter which metric. Not a single post ever says, "finally the good teachers will have a chance to be recognized and given the bigger raises". Its more important to protect bad teachers.

Throwing more money at education doesn't work, you can look at spending vs results over different areas. More money means more burecrats, which equals more DNC money from union members. More money improving education does not equal more money for DNC, so it won't happen.

GOP is not allowed to do anything with education without guarnteeing losing elections due to lies from the DNC.

So you are suggesting we stop the DNC's war against children.

Re:Not just florida...

[Amouth]

I still remember having an elementary text book wrong, and the teach teaching too it.. it has a typeo saying the Statue of Liberty was made of bronze.. When i pointed it out after the teacher read it.. she paused and then just moved on ignoring me.. what can you do right? i believe i was ~6-7 years old at the time, but i knew i was right so i crossed it out and corrected it in my book so the next kid would get it right.

Re:Not just florida...

[Yaotzin]

The initial salary for teachers in US is actually higher than for teachers in Finland and Japan (source: OECD, Education at a Glance, 2011).

Re:Not just florida...

[uniquename72]

Can't be done in this country currently, the teacher's unions are too much money for the DNC in their current form in order to risk losing some of it by changing things...

GOP is not allowed to do anything with education without guarnteeing losing elections due to lies from the DNC.

So you are suggesting we stop the DNC's war against children.

I notice you very carefully neglected to mention what exactly Republicans would like to do to increase education. Teach creationism in science class? An economics class explaining how cutting taxes while vastly increasing spending (during wartime, for example) leads to a balanced budget? Babies from storks?

The fact is, neither party has any interest in educating anyone, as it would put their jobs at risk.

Re:Not just florida...

[PeanutButterBreath]

IT's time we get real teachers in there and fire all the administration that makes retard decisions to have the Phys Ed teacher, to hold the algebra classes because he knows how to use a calculator.

Obviously, the Phys Ed teacher is better suited to teaching Physics, what with being a professional Physician.

Re:Not just florida...

[reve_etrange]

It's not that the metrics don't work, it's that in most areas teachers literally have to read from a script.

How could it possibly be fair to judge someone by the effectiveness of a standard curriculum that they must use?
It's also one of the reasons that socioeconomic factors have a larger impact than teacher quality.

Re:Not just florida...

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep blaming the Unions and the Teachers for your problems. That's just the kind of personal responsibility that the GOP enjoys.

A completely hypocritical attempt to blame a convenient scapegoat for the problems while not bothering to correlate it with facts.

I agree, the bureaucrats are the problem. But those bureaucrats have been ones espousing the conservative ideologies. They funnel money into private providers, into bean-counters and result-measurements, and report-makers, all of which the GOP has demanded. Who fought hardest for a test-based system? That would be the Republicans.

It hasn't worked out. Yet you blame the Teachers and their dirty nasty unions. Because you have this gut feeling that it's still the teachers that are the problem, nothing else. After all, they're being protected...yet not one thought ever intrudes into your head that maybe the teachers aren't the problem, but the administration? Maybe it is more important to protect good teachers from bad bureaucrats. You do realize that they are the ones who want to fire teachers? It is more important not to judge people on bad criteria, and that's what those metrics really are. You can't conceive of it, but it's true.

The GOP has had plenty of opportunity to change education. It's failed. It's been failing for the past few decades. We've been marching to their tune. It never works. It just keeps failing, but like the narcissistic demo-gouges you are, you never have to live up to that, but can continue with your path of deflection and blame.

And yes, I do blame the Democrats for not standing up to that, for not actually doing what it would take to fix schools. Namely implement a national education system that is accountable and answerable, and not leave everything up to the local school boards who can scapegoat the responsibilities elsewhere. Except in Football and other sports. Those matter.

  But education? Ah, clearly somebody else's fault.

That's the GOP way. They've learned from you. Deflection, Evasion, Denial, Narcissism. Never once do you take accountability or blame. Democrats and liberals will. They don't have the arrogance since of self-important delusion that's found all over the Right-Wing.

That's why you can blame anybody but yourself. And why we're too inclined to try to listen to you, because we don't want to be like you. And yet you will continue trying your lies, while you're not challenged by those in authority.

A pity, huh? We need some liberals with back-bone.

Re:Not just florida...

[nukeade]

Not quite the same, but I've seen college exams where the professor had it wrong, marked me wrong, and would not fix the mistake.

One professor (computer graphics exam) thought the Sun behaved like a point light source on Earth. It does not, it behaves like a plane light source because it is much larger than the Earth and the light arriving from the sun is for all computer graphics purposes arriving with the same vector direction. He would have none of it.

The other was on a quantum information exam, with a question about quantum encryption. Essentially a probability question involving a classical channel and a quantum channel. If he had been correct, then you would have been able to transmit information faster than the speed of light using quantum entanglement. You cannot, and instead you require the extra piece of information from the classical channel.

I've even had college profs knock me down a letter grade out of spite. This happened to me in two CS courses, one where I finished all of his weekly projects on the first day and aced his exams by reverse-engineering the code instead of memorizing what he wanted us to do. In the other, the prof was teaching an object-oriented programming class and couldn't figure out object polymorphism, so I offered to teach it for him because he said he was just going to skip that part of the course. I did a great job, but he didn't like being made to look like the amateur he was.

The grades don't bother me so much as the majority of a class walking out and having a misconception about the world around them or missing out on one of the most critical components of a subject. People pay good money for education and will go out and do important things that are relevant to anyone with what they learn, and that is absolutely important to me. That said, I learned long ago that most adults are actually just children that were given a measure of authority. While I can definitely sympathize with your situation, the approach I take now is never to touch anyone else's claim to authority.

Re:Not just florida...

[roc97007]

In fairness, sometimes you have to teach a topic on which you are not an expert. My daughter was homeschooled for a few years (she's now about to graduate 12th grade at a magnet school) and I don't mind telling you, I had one hell of a time with biology, which I had skipped in school. (My school allowed you to take physics instead if you had already passed chemistry.) I wasn't even a chapter ahead of her; often I was only two or three pages ahead of her. (Geeze, biology is hard! I now have a profound respect for people in that field. As an engineer, I always thought of organisms as "really complicated machines". Now I think of organisms as "impossibly complicated machines".) And because I did not know the subject (as was the case with your teacher) I did not unquestioningly believe the textbook. If we found something questionable, we looked it up on the internet, found three or four sources, and saw if they agreed. (Not a sure thing, but better than having only one source.) We never found an actual error, although in a couple of cases I'd argue that some parts violated the "correlation is not causation" rule.

And then, we got into US History at her current school, and wow! Talk about logical fallacies! In reading the text to her, I'd have to stop every second paragraph and remark "those two things are actually unrelated". or "that's demonstrably untrue" or "that's a false dilemma". It was hard to get through the materials, find answers that passed the course, and still leave her critical thinking skills intact.

In summary, it's not necessarily how well the teacher knows the material, it's how well the teacher is engaged as a teacher.

Re:Not just florida...

[NeverSuchBefore]

Great. This is another problem with the educational system. Rather than encouraging free thinking, it encourages absolute obedience to authority. Don't question authority! They could never be wrong! I experienced this many times when I was in school.

Shut up and memorize this information for a test! Rote memorization is the best way to learn and understand the world around you!

Re:Not just florida...

[j-beda]

Not quite the same, but I've seen college exams where the professor had it wrong, marked me wrong, and would not fix the mistake.

One professor (computer graphics exam) thought the Sun behaved like a point light source on Earth. It does not, it behaves like a plane light source because it is much larger than the Earth and the light arriving from the sun is for all computer graphics purposes arriving with the same vector direction. He would have none of it.

Humm, he wanted to treat the sun as a point source at 1 AU (93 million miles, 49,597,870.7 kilometres from wikipedia), while you wanted to treat it as a point source at infinite distance (thus generating plane waves)? Any "plane wave" like behaviour of sunlight is not because the sun is huge, but rather because the sun is far away. The larger the sun, the LESS its light behaves like a plane wave.

From a shadow casting point of view, both plane wave illumination and distant point source illumination result in sharp shadows, with very little to distinguish them. For a point sources at 1AU, the difference between angles on different sides of person-sized objects at for person-sized distances where the shadow is formed, is pretty minimal. To get a 1% increase in shadow size, you would need to have the shadow be 1% longer than the distance from the point source to the object casting the shadow, or about one million miles - which is probably not the type of thing you are trying to represent with your computer graphics.

  I've never done any computer graphics involving scene lighting or anything like that, but I doubt the difference between point source and plane wave would be noticeable in modeling sunlight.

In actual fact, the sun is not a point source, it is an extended object about 1/2 of a degree in size, which means that shadows cast by sharp edges in sunlight have a "penumbra" of 0.5 degrees. Here is an image showing the formation of this type of shadow:

http://www.pnas.org/content/96/9/5239/F2.expansion.html

For a shadow cast on something a meter behind the object, using good old trig (1m) x tangent(0.5 degrees) = 0.00872686779 m or almost 9 mm. Thus sunlight shadows are fuzzy edges for real-world distances (albeit not really very fuzzy), compared to the sharp edges that plane waves or point sources would cast.

It may well be that the professor was "wrong" to model sunlight as a point source, but it seems at least as wrong to model it as a plane wave, when there is up to 1/2 of a degree in difference between different directions of the light from the source.

Re:Not just florida...

[AK Marc]

Not a single post ever says, "finally the good teachers will have a chance to be recognized and given the bigger raises". Its more important to protect bad teachers.

That's because nobody has ever identified a good way to identify good teachers. And even if they did with objective results, you'd likely end up with a tragedy of the commons situation where the goal isn't an educational framework, but jumping the right hoops (teaching to the test, to the exclusion of education is something I've seen lots of).

In general, those who step in, claiming to have some solution to improve things, are really there to break it (sometimes with good intentions, but often with bad intentions).

The science of test design

[Guppy]

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.

Some of the problematic questions given as examples are close to techno-babble -- ie, the more you know about the topic, the less sense it makes. I'd venture a guess that the FCAT likely has not been through any sort of rigorous analysis of its test design (let alone the question of test content).

Even without knowing anything about the content, you can learn a lot about a measurement instrument's internal validity by doing analysis on the students' results. One particular technique that would be applicable in this case -- upon examining the particular students that got a disputed question wrong (or right) , was it the highest-performing students that tended to get it wrong, or the lowest? (This type of analysis assumes that the test is valid overall, with occasionally invalid questions).

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.

Re:The science of test design

[Guppy]

And how do you define who are the "highest performing students" in the first place? Isn't that what the test is for? Are the "highest performing students" the ones that gave the "correctly wrong" answers in previous tests?

Ah, you've just hit upon a fundamental point in any sort of test (be it a scholastic test or a medical diagnostic test) -- your variable definition / case definition. It is this factor that your measurement instrument (your exam or laboratory test) seeks to quantify (and there are various ways to correlate how well it does, using tests like Cronbach's Alpha). And yes, it can be anything you like, including being able to answer "correctly wrong" -- what matters is that you can justify your definition, and that it has utility towards whatever purpose you're seeking to achieve.

That being said, "correctly wrong-ness" would be an example of a poorly chosen variable to measure, even if we leave aside the issues of how useful or justify-able it is; it's a variable with some odd behavior that makes it difficult to work with. Because when you start looking at parameters of students you might want to study (for instance, "how well they predict the behavior of a test-tube microbial ecosystem's behavior vs. their correctly-wrongness-metric", or "how much students will eventually earn in an engineering career vs. their prior correctly-wrongness-metric"), you'll find that the tail of your "correctly-wrongness" metric splits into two groups that have very little in common with each other -- in reality, this being the students on the opposite sides of the bell-curve; too knowledgeable to answer incorrectly-right, and the students too dumb.

Because what you've done, is that while your subjects have fundamental characteristics that could have allowed you to sort them along one dimension, you've picked a variable that ends up splitting them into a pseudo-categorical sort, where two very different types of subjects end up in the same category.

Re:The science of test design

[tool462]

Absolutely. My wife is a 5th grade teacher. I'm a physicist by training, engineer by trade, so she'll often bring home some of their testing materials to have me take a look. There have been quite a few "That's not right. That's not even wrong" moments where the question and answers were clearly written by somebody who did not fully understand the material. A lot of it appeared to be misguided attempts to put something from a textbook into their own words. Confusion on similar terms like meteor, meteorite, comet, asteroid, etc.

It's the kind of mistakes I would never fault an individual for making (5th grader or not). It's easily corrected, and not harmful in and of itself. However, when teaching this problem is amplified. You end up with students who are even more confused, and the one person who is supposed to alleviate that confusion can not. You end up reinforcing the "science is hard" mantra and have a disengaged class as a result.

This is why I hated school

[jdbannon]

This sort of thing was the start of my disaffection with school in about the first grade. Up to this point I was really excited to come and learn, and then we got a math workbook that had a tremendous error rate in the answer key. I pointed some of these out to my teacher and she actually went back to check the answer key again to tell me I was wrong. I don't think it would have been possible to design a better way to show me that:

1. The teacher didn't care.
2. The system (IE the textbook writers) didn't care.
3. The teacher was so caught up in the system that she depended on an answer key for checking rather than performing the simple addition herself and seeing what was obvious.
4. School was irrelevant. Even in elementary the teachers were dumber than the students, and grades didn't necessarily correlate with anything important in reality.

Re:This is why I hated school

[ledow]

I work in UK schools, and have done for my entire working career. Mostly I do primary schools (5-10), but I've done the whole range of statutory education.

In one school, I kid you not, as the IT guy, I was selected from the staff to run an in-lunch maths session for those kids who were borderline between passing and failing. Just me, on my own, no teachers, only kids that they were worried about failing. What the hell was *I* teaching them for? They all passed.

I've had to ADD UP for teachers who can't do it without a calculator or laptop (seriously, I had to stop one teacher from going to their laptop in their room to use it as a calculator to add two two-digit numbers). I've had to tell a group of four teachers how long 8 hours and 49 minutes was in minutes because after TEN MINUTES none of them had got the right answer (and it was for a sheet describing how much time they'd spent on a "special needs" child that week!). These people were teaching basic numeracy to children at the time.

I've had to correct everything from newsletters to parent's letters to website notices for basic punctuation, spelling and grammar. I've done it in every school I've ever worked in, even my current one which is an independent (private) school. I've had to tell office staff and teachers where apostrophes go in possessive plurals, because they didn't know.

In one secondary school and sixth form college (so ages 11-18), they printed up thousands of brochures to "sell" the school in which they stated that the equipment in the rooms was "complimentary" to their child's education (when they meant "complementary"). I was the only member of staff to point it out (and I don't teach!) and was told that the English department had checked the proofs "so it must be right". Nobody thought to pick up a dictionary to check.

Just because they are a teacher does *NOT* mean they are infallible, or even have the skills they used to have any more. Teachers are *NOT* given maths tests every year (and, yes, in the UK, it *is* maths with an 's'). They are marking their own children's work and nobody else sees that except (possibly) during an inspection. All anybody else sees in a number that they trust implicitly. Any mistakes discovered will result in a hasty "Oh, that's just a mistake" and then only THAT one checked and changed, even in the face of an inspection.

This is not just one school, one teacher, hell even one country (if some posts I read on educational IT forums are anywhere near true), this is universal. Sure, there are probably places out there that clamp down more than most but still these sorts of things happen all the time.

In one independent school I worked for, they produced "lateral thinking" quizzes. In my early career, I spent a great deal of time converting these quizzes from sketched paper into reprintable, readable, electronic documents. They supplied the question and "answer" and I just had to make nice worksheets and answer sheets.

I corrected literally EVERY OTHER QUESTION as I typed it up and drew the diagrams for them. Nobody complained, or even spotted that I'd done so (i.e. my answers were correct, theirs weren't - and NOBODY WAS CHECKING) and my brother continued to work there for 10+ years still teaching using those same sheets. This was a school that only opened when other schools shut so that pupils in private schools could be pushed through the entrance exams for the private secondaries. The fees were enormous, and on top of private school fees, and the teachers literally could not write questions and correct answers for the simplest of things (and, also, did not notice if someone had tampered with basically EVERY answer they gave).

My bullshit detector is reading zero, here, personally. It'd only raise if someone said they worked in a school that had NEVER employed people like that, or even that they CURRENTLY had no staff like that.

"Choose the best answer"

[shoppa]

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.

Re:"Choose the best answer"

[Rakarra]

As I had mentioned elsewhere, this was the case with my Sun Solaris Certification Exam as well. Not "what gets the job done," or "what gets the job done in the cleanest or best way," but "how would Sun like the job to be done?"

Re:FCAT

[alexo]

What you see here is the result letting an organization take charge that willingly misspells the word "fact" in order to name themselves.

I don not remember hearing you complain when French Connection UK used a similar tactic.

Re:How smart?

[DragonWriter]

Everybody gets this confused. All standardized tests for scholastic purposes measure achievement or potential achievement, not how "smart" someone is.

IQ tests are used for scholastic purposes. They pretty expressly are intended to measure how "smart" someone is.

(Plus, a number of tests that are intended to measure potential acheivement have results that correlate very strongly with IQ, which suggests that, intentionally or not, they also measure how smart you are. Which shouldn't be surprising, since "potential acheivement" and "being smart" are very closely linked concepts -- even if actual acheivement and being smart are more distantly related concepts.)
 

Massive STEM fail

[damn_registrars]

Naturally, when your state can't handle simple math, the science, technology, and engineering will end up failing as well. It's a good thing that Florida does so well at ... wait, what was it that Florida did well?

Re:Massive STEM fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Election fraud?

Re:Banana monochromator

[Jiro]

That one's not too bad because it's not presented as a multiple choice question but as something for a teacher to grade. It's obviously asking the teacher to look for the student's knowledge that the banana is yellow because of the light it reflects. A student who gave an actual correct answer (that the banana reflects a part of the spectrum that looks yellow when combined) would then be marked as correct.

And to add another anecdote to the mix, I had an elementary schoolteacher who insisted that iodine is a liquid. She probably thought that bottles of "iodine" contain pure iodine rather than this being short for "iodine solution".

Incorrect questions do happen...

[starseeker]

it's how you handle it that counts. Years ago, I was part of a program where a college did some summer school programs for (IIRC) middle school students designed to give them more exposure to science. On the whole it was a good program, but the college physics students working that summer looked at the physics questions on the final test and discovered several problems. To the credit of those running the program, when the college students pointed out the issues to the program leaders they either struck the questions or gave credit for correct answers when more than one answer was shown to be correct. And they did so as the test was in progress, rather than let the students trip on them and get slowed down. I was impressed at the time, and am more impressed in retrospect.

Science questions can be tricky to get right - what seems like an unambiguous question when it is written turns out to be much less so when you start thinking more "generally" about things like frame of reference. It's important to own up if those kinds of mistakes happen though, because the students who are thinking about the questions deeply enough to spot those issues are exactly the ones you most want to encourage in scientific study. The response "yeah you're technically right but we're not changing your score because we meant this" is very discouraging, and will tend to cause students to shy away from complex subjects. It demonstrates that learning the material is not always enough to get decent grades - why bother putting effort into it when there are other fields that more reliably reward their efforts?

Part of me wonders why teachers are still having to write their own questions for basic subjects like this... you'd think there would be Creative Commons licensed materials assembled that had been widely vetted and community reviewed... add a bunch of vetted, correct "twists" to each question that the teacher could opt for when assembling a given test and memorizing all the possible answers gets prohibitive - or at least, gets hard to do without actually learning what needs to be learned to answer correctly in the first place...

What To Think, Now How

[deweyhewson]

Another classic example of the system - and this is hardly unique to public education - putting emphasis on teaching what to think, instead of how.

I had a 4th grade teacher who I used to drive bonkers because, while teaching mathematics, she would teach that it was not possible to subtract to any number smaller than 0, similar to teaching that you can't divide by zero. This was because, at that point, the curriculum had not yet reached the level of negative numbers. Well, I would constantly insist that no, you could subtract to a number smaller than 0, but because it was contrary to the point she was trying to teach she would tell me I was wrong.

The problem is in having a system which is so structured to the point of quantifying learning to a set of metrics based on what we want children to think that any actual education, or independent thought on the part of the students or the teachers, is completely marginalized and often destroyed.

They don't understand what a TEST is.

[mysidia]

We cannot assume that student saw a TV show or read an article."

You also cannot assume that a student DID NOT read an article.

If they had read an article, you could be penalizing them for having an additional understanding beyond the material in addition to full understanding of the material.

Tests are supposed to be objective measures of understanding of the material under test. Not subjective measures of the student's level of understanding matching your assumptions.

And tests are not supposed to be measures designed to ensure that students do not have an understanding of other matters unrelated to the material; whether that came from independent learning, instructors providing students learning opportunities that encompass the material but exceed it, etc.

Re:How smart?

[causality]

Even then I wonder how they can manage to measure "student achievement" if a correct answer turns out to be "wrong".

If they can regard correct answers as wrong, they can also regard incorrect answers as right. In effect, they are assuming the power to make "student achievement" whatever they say it is.

Didn't get the result you wanted? Move the goalposts! Students doing "poorly" means naturally that the schools and your NEA buddies need more money. Students doing "well" when convenient means that you're a competent leader who can successfully manage something important to most parents. That's the problem with politics when it is not divorced from facts.

A little Orwellian?

[MDillenbeck]

'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'

'Four.'

'And if the party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?'

'Four.'

The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston's body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O'Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four.'

The needle went up to sixty.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!'

The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!'

'How many fingers, Winston?'

'Five! Five! Five!'

'No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How many fingers, please?'

'Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!'

Abruptly he was sitting up with O'Brien's arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to O'Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that O'Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was O'Brien who would save him from it.

'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.

'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.'

'Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'

I can understand the viewpoint given in the summary - how can a 5th grader possibly know the answer to such a challenging question? After all, are not all children ranked by their grade and set to be equal to their peers in that same approximately 1 year category? It defies their understanding of "abstract though begins at age x", and they forget that their is variance within that spectrum. There may be a child in 5th grade that understands advanced scientific topics, but since the probability of that is far, far lower than the probability of selecting the answer at random when given 1 of 4 or 1 of 5 choices, they have assumed the child just guessed.

However, there is something frightening about assessing the right answer as incorrect. Perhaps the testing needs to be redesigned to eliminate the ease at which randomly guessed right answers can be assessed. Unfortunately, scantrons are cheap ways of correcting thousands of tests - thus the write your answer and have a human correct will probably never be reimplemented. (Sorry for the ramblings - I'm cramming for a Linear Algebra midterm while slashdotting.)

False advertising?

[gstrickler]

"Robert Krampf, who runs the web site 'The Happy Scientist,' ...

I read his blog post, Robert doesn't sound so happy.

Mensa anecdote

[Kittenman]

Reminds me of a story about a student who was asked to measure the height of a building, given nothing but a barometer. The answer was the obvious one, but rather than give that, she came up with three alternatives.

a) Measure the height of the barometer, and carefully laying it end to end on the side of the building, find how many barometer-lengths high the building is.
b) Measure the length of the shadow of the barometer and the length of the shadow of the building. Using proportions, work out the height of the building
c) Locate the custodian of the building. Say to him, 'If you tell me how high your building is, I'll give you this barometer".

History doesn't record whether she got a pass or not.

[Truthiness : Truth] as [ _______ : Science]

[Guppy]

Who needs Science when you've got "Sciencyness"?

FCAT testing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Nothing but barometer, not barometer + X

[Vegemeister]

d) Measure the pressure difference between the top and bottom of the building.

Requires a table of atmospheric density, a hygrometer, and a thermometer.

Test taking skills

[JazzHarper]

It's not about knowing which answers are accurate--it's about passing the test. Perceptive students learn very quickly how to provide the answers that are required, regardless of whether they are technically true or not. There is new about that--I learned it 40 years ago and scored much higher on standardized tests than I really deserved. It is utterly naïve to cast that in terms of recent politics.

I have often wondered about the test-makers...

[cowtamer]

"The Content Advisory committee felt that students would know what flowers were and would view this statement as subjective."

It doesn't get better, actually. Even in higher education you might be punished for knowing too much, or not having the same mindset that a bunch of people sitting around a conference table had at a given moment.

This is why I'm a fan of tests like the MCAT and the GRE, which test application of scientific concepts, with questions statistically validated and reviewed by a lot of people. You won't find as much of the the type of nonsense mentioned in the article on national tests seen by a lot of people.

Testable

[DrYak]

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).