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Florida Thinks Their Students Are Too Stupid To Know the Right Answers
gurps_npc writes "Robert Krampf, who runs the web site 'The Happy Scientist,' recently wrote in his blog about problems with Florida's Science FCAT. The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is an attempt to measure how smart the students are. Where other states have teachers cheating to help students, Florida decided to grade correct answers as wrong. Mr. Krampf examined the state's science answers and found several that clearly listed right answers as wrong. One question had 3 out of 4 answers that were scientifically true. He wrote to the Florida Department of Education's Test Development center. They admitted he was right about the answers, but said they don't expect 5th graders to realize they were right. For this reason they marked them wrong. As such, they were not changing the tests. Note: they wouldn't let him examine real tests, just the practice tests given out. So we have no idea if FCAT is simply too lazy to provide good practice questions, or too stupid to be allowed to test our children."
...educated.
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?
Check your premises.
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.
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.
Check your premises.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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.
Check your premises.
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)
#DeleteChrome
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).
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.
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.
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
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.
In multiple choice questions, the "most correct" answer is the right one.
What's the next number in the series [2, 3, 5, 8]?
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.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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.
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.
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.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
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.