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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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?

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.

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...

[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...

[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...

[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.

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

[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.

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...

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.

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.