I think it's a waste of resources and instructional time in the public schools. Anyone else?

And it's not just cause my ass has fallen asleep sitting in this hard wooden chair while "monitoring" the hall.

phil, i can't even get started on this because my head will explode acrosss the continent.

it's a huge waste of time. at every grade level. teacher's now spend a fairly large amouint of time teaching to the test. this does not further the cause of learning. it's all about "school/teacher performance" which is a joke.

my daughter is in 2 ap classes in her junior year.
she has an incredible passion for history and for the next 2 months they will be studying toward the ap tests coming up in may that happens to fall one day before the sats.
luckily she took the sats already and won't have to deal with that extra pressure.

it's nuts.

o.k., at least it's not just me.

I think it's an administrative necessity. It's the most effective way for an oversight body (i.e. the DoE) to evaluate the progress of thousands of schools responsible for millions of students.

It's also the only effective way colleges can make their first round cuts in their admissions processes.

I suspect the problem that you confront is that your school is trying to game the system--sacrificing true "education" for test preparation.

The tests should evaluate how effectively the schools teach their students a cadre of minimum skills/knowledge--not how well they teach them to fill out a Scan-Tron sheet.

edit: felch.

My ass is really killing me.

Must be a break between test sections, I hear the restless murmur of the wild things.

Yeah, i know Billz is right, but it still gets my goat.

I agree.
Ayah -- I went through the same thing in AP History. The class was boring, I think I had a low B in it, because of the quizzes and readings (which I just didn't do) but I got a 5 on the test (better than the validictorian)

This is an extension of our reading conversation in that you have to foster a love of learning in kids before you can get them to buy into testing, etc.

Its a hard series of questions with MANY landmines (cue someone with a kid with disability, or a person of color) and I would HATE to be a teacher that had to "teach" the memorization of a bunch of shit...but I also think that a base level of knowledge is needed, and that there probably isn't a better way to ascertain that level.

<== was a total slacker in French (as well as the rest of high school), but was the only one in school to nail a 5 on the AP exam. Six free "A" credits freshman year in college for it...woohoo.

i think i could write an essay on the shortcomings of the north american education system. its totally and almost irrepairably broken. my little way of protest in these tests was to write in the written section of it the stupidity of the test and the whole stupidity of the education system. much to my surprise afterwards the school guidance councellor told me that she thought what i wrote was great and there were people in the school who agreed.

She was trying to seduce you.

I can kick the shit out of a standardized test, but I don't believe they really measure intelligence or learning all that well. I also know that one reason I can do well is because I can read pretty quickly, so I never have problems with the time allowance.

I got a 5 on APUSH, too. How many of those do we have slithering around these parts?

That said, I think Billz is right.

i understand that some testing is necessary but what has happened over the past decade or so is that schools are under more pressure to have students "perform" and these performances are not accurate measures of any type of learning. it's a measure of memorization which is usually very short lived.

teachers spend a lot of time teaching to the tests whereas in the past it seems like they taught (well, those that didn't read the paper all day) and then tests were taken. and the testing didn't seem so frequent.

we need another assessment tool for a school's/principal's/teacher's performance in addition to the testing (since it seems like it's needed at some levels).

thats what i figured. i cant say getting my freak on with the school guidance councillor was an altogether unwelcome thought. on a more serious note, she was awesome. we had a few of those crush your dreams, be a bitch type guidance councillors, but she was the only one who was actually supportive.

He's right. Go back and show it to her.

This pretty much sums it up. I can't stress it enough people: READING COMPREHENSION

All i got were 5's. To get anything less wasn't allowed.

AP USH
AP EuroH
AP Psych
AP Bio
AP Chem
AP Phsyics B
AP Music Theory
AP Lit

that's it. 35 ACT, 1490 SAT, but it don't mean shit.

There's actual smart people out there, i just have a good memory, an inexhaustible supply of sharpened £2 pencils, and the scariest parents ever.

With scores like that, you think i would have done something with my life.

Woops.

I'm not sure I buy this. I think some teachers teach to the test because it's an easy way out. That's not a slam on Mike or other teachers, but just a general observation of human behavior.

I had some incredible teachers—especially in English & History—coming through my public school system, but I also had some who barely cared enough to mail it in—usually in Math. It is easy to point out that English and History allow for more debate, discourse and open discussion than Math, but there were other teachers I was lucky not to have that just weren't good teachers.

I'm still amazed how many teachers that weren't focused on standardized testing still "taught" me wrong information.

You're right. Schools in my state are now evaluated completely upon the students' performances on these tests. And by schools, I mean teachers in individual subjects that are responsible for the students' scores in their subject area. Problem is, by the time I get the little buggers in Jr. High, many of them are already "left behind", yet I am still supposed to be able to bring them up to level so that our school doesn't fall into corrective action. I don't have the solution, but the current system is not complete.

Is there actually good predictive validity and reliability associated with them? I know the GRE isn't that predictive of graduate school success.

No. Standardized tests tell you how well or poorly an individual student does on standardized tests.

And that's about it.

There's noise from the state and federal legislators about making teacher salary and school funding merit based, with standardized test scores as the benchmark for pay, and budget. So the schools that do well get more cash, and the schools that are fucked will eventually go into state receivorship and be closed. Then those kids will spill into nearby schools which will eventually be closed. Cue sound effect of dominos.

Think for a second about how fucked up THAT is.

My ass is still asleep, and now my balls really itch.

In a way I really like standardized tests, mostlly becuase I'm good at them. My high SAT score helped make my average GPA score look better. I don't think that the material on the tests are any less irrelevant than most of the stuff that is taught in school anyway. The thing I like about tests is that you don't have to do a lot of pointless homework or busywork to do well on them. I felt that my GPA had nothing to do with how much I knew or learned but everything to do with the fact that I didn't do most of my homework. The kids at my high school who had the highest GPA's were the one's who spent hours on homework every night. I always have scored in the top ten or top 5 percentile of every standardized test I've ever taken yet ended up with only a 3.5 GPA. I think that in school you are more rewarded for doing busywork than for actual knowledge or attendence. That being said I don't think that a schools funding should be at all based on the results of standardized tests.

Your GPA is indicative of your work ethic. This is the true benchmark of how successful you will be.