Subject:
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Re: Standardized tests (was: Yummy!)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 7 May 2000 06:39:25 GMT
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Viewed:
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230 times
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Chris Weeks wrote:
> And still contain biases, cost more, aren't reliable, are of dubious validity,
> and are still not really indicative of what the student can do. And they
> certainly don't evaluate what the student knows. Traditional tests are better
> at getting to that kind of info. These evaluation techniques should be used to
> whatever extent is practicable in conjunction with standardized tests.
As a side comment just on this part of your reply, Chris (I can't speak
to the rest):
I was interested by the fact that you referred to the standardised
mutiple choice tests as "traditional tests". When I was in high school
in the UK in the mid-seventies, multiple-choice tests were beginning to
be tested as replacements for the then-traditional tests which mostly
consisted in humanities subjects of essay questions. I was part of a
class which took an experimental multiple-choice test in History.
History was a subject I wasn't particularly interested in at that time,
but I happen to be very good at remembering facts and I was startled to
be told later that I scored in the 98th percentile in the country! I
can't remember what my exam mark was in History when we did the real
exams later on, but it certainly wasn't that good. I also remember the
opinion of those of us students who took the test (and other multiple
choice tests which were being tested in other subjects) that they were
far too easy - much easier than the essay exams, because you didn't have
to think! This was an academically-oriented public (in the US, not Brit
sense!) grammar school.
On a different note it is certainly true that some people to better on
tests/exams of any kind than others who may be just as competent in the
subject matter, or more so. I never struggled with or worried about
exams, but my daughter (who is just as competent in her areas as I was)
finds them terribly nerve-wracking and as a result does not show as well
as she could. The difference is not in IQ or knowledge, but in
temperament.
Kevin
---
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Standardized tests (was: Yummy!)
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| (...) better (...) to (...) Good call. These large multiple choice exams - the ones that the article and I are debating - are not meant as measures for individual classes. By the time I was in high school a decade after you, machine-graded tests had (...) (25 years ago, 7-May-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Standardized tests (was: Yummy!)
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| Sorry for the length of this folks, I so rarely get to use my Masters of Education ;-) (...) I think that whether one agrees or disagrees depends largely on what they think they are agreeing to. That page says a fair many things that are correct as (...) (25 years ago, 7-May-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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