Darned Standardized Tests

In article , Chris Himes says...

(Iowacookiemom) wrote in message
...

As far as I know, the test is standardized and how he gets to the correct
answer will not matter. He becomes easily distracted due to his ADD and the
process of showing work that he doesn't need to write down to come to the
answer slows him down, distracts him, takes valuable time away and leaves him
angry and unwilling to try.


In NY our state math tests are graded based on the work shown, in
addition to the answer. There are a lot of "explain how you got your
answer" type questions, which my math whiz son always does poorly on.
He has a more intuitive grasp of hte concepts, and HATES to write, so
he may get the correct answer, but often scores lower than he should
on these tests because of his explanations (or lack thereof) and
reluctance to write any more than absolutely necessary.

Fortunately, he always scores in the "passing" range. I just hate
these things.....

Chris



Same state, same kind of kid, same problem.

I know *I* would have had problems with having to verbalize all my math
thinking, also. Some things I reason out visually somehow. Then I would have
to figure out how to back up to communicate that. It's very frustrating, and I
think it's yet another difficulty my son is having because teaching attracts
mosly verbally-skilled people.

Banty

In article ,
(Robyn Kozierok) wrote:

In article ,
Iowacookiemom wrote:
His teacher has been drilling in specific test-taking techniques for math
for
the past three weeks. Henry brings home a 3-4 page math worksheet each
night,
and he must answer the questions and show *all* of his work. He is marked
off
for not showing appropriate work. Even if the question is like this:

Suzie has $6 and wants to buy gumballs for her 5 friends. The gumballs cost
10
cents each. Which number sentence would you use to find out how many
gumballs
Suzie can buy for each friend? (and then four number sentences are provided
in
a multiple choice format).

He must show work. What work he must show, we can't quite figure out. But
he's had nearly every worksheet returned home to us for revision -- not
because
the answers are wrong (they never are) but because the work is not shown.
Each
question is worth 5 points, 3 of which are for the work shown.

As far as I know, the test is standardized and how he gets to the correct
answer will not matter.

This is worth finding out. Standardized tests aren't always multiple
choice these days. In Vermont, the "standardized" testing includes
math and writing portfolios at many grade levels. The amount of writing
they are supposed to do to show their work in math is insane. They are
taught a format that goes something like:

I know....
I need to find out....
I will use approach
then do the actual work
And then also "extend" the work somehow. Say another problem that it is
like, or generalize it, do it again with different numbers, etc.

For the problem above he might write:

I know that Suzie has $6 which is the same as 600 cents. I know that
gumballs are 10 cents each, and that Suzie wants to buy them for 5 friends.

I need to find out how many gumballs Suzie can afford, and then find out
how to equally divide them among 5 friends.

I will use logical thinking (this is an official "approach" they can
use; others are tables, diagrams, guess-and-check, find a pattern, etc...)

The number of gumballs Suzie can afford is 600 / 10. Then we divide by
5 to divide them among her friends. So the number of gumballs Suzie
can buy for each friend is (600 / 10) / 5.



Now personally, I think this is an evil thing to do to math. For kids
who are mathematically and not verbally inclined, this takes all the fun
out of math. But anyhow...

My son's verbal skills are fine -- but his math skills are great. He
will look at a problem, and just know the answer. Asking him to show
his work is painful -- like asking me to show my "work" in how I get to
"two plus two equals ?") -- especially if it means writing more than
"2+2=4", like, "well, two is two ones, and the second two is also two
ones, and when you put two ones with two ones, you get four ones which
is four", or "2=1+1, so 2+2 = 1+1+1+1, which is 4", or, worse, drawing
a picture of two items, and another two items, and then counting them.
What's the point -- as long as I know the answer?

And, for those who want to tell me that when he gets to higher math is
difficulty in explaining HOW he got the answer, forget it. He's
finished one semester of calculus in college so far, without any
problems. His grades in college are better than his high school grades,
and he tutors other kids, many of them considerably older than him.

I HATED it when he'd bring home stuff that was marked wrong because he
didn't show his work. I especially hate it in grade school, when at
least one of his teachers believed he must be cheating because "no one
could just SEE the answer like that" (she couldn't, therefore it was
inconceivable that he could, apparently.)

Enough ranting . . .

My nightmare scenario is this: what if the teacher walks through the room
*during the actual test* insisting they show their work? This is likely to
completely derail Henry's ability to be successful on the test.

Find out in advance what the test will require and what the testing
procedure will be.

One more thing -- are you allowed to exempt your child from the testing?
In many states parents who object to the whole process are allowed to have
their children excused.

Good luck,
--Robyn


The "no child left behind" obscenity is making that more difficult, as
schools that do not test some set percentage of their students can be in
trouble.

I'm pretty lucky: in spite of the fact that my kids get lousy grades,
they do very well on this sort of test. (Fortunately, the standardized
math tests my son has had to take to NOT require him to show his work,
so he'd bring home "high honors" in the Governor's Golden State Exams in
Algebra and Geometry, and at the same time bring home C's and D's in the
high school class.)

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

"Cathy Kearns" wrote in message .com...
"animzmirot" wrote in message
...

Oh, I've SO BTDT.... I wish I could give you a lot of positive answers,
but
I just can't. I frigging HATE standardized tests right now. snip

In California there is no consequences to the students who
fail, or don't do well on the test, only to the schools, and
indirectly, the teachers. (The high school students figured
this out and started to make intricate dot pictures on their
test forms. Now the state offeres scholarships for doing
well on the test to convince the high school students to
at least try.)

My dd's friend figured this out in 1979 for the math test all the
seniors had to take to rate the school, and she did exactly that -
answered in a dot pattern. She went back and worked the problems too,
but she didn't change her dot patterns if she found a different answer
when she did so.

I told my daughter to take her best guess for all the questions before
she went and worked the problems out so that all the questions were
answered, because I know that if you have some idea of the answer,
they cannot make a formula that corrects for guessing in a multiple
choice test. (I was taking a course on testing at the time) So she
did that. It really upset the competitive boys in their calculus
class when these two girls both got better scores than they did when
they worked as fast as they could and actually tried to get the
answers right. But they didn't finish most of the problems, so of
course they didn't do as well.


I remind my daughters of that around standardized
test time. They go in much less stressed, revel in how stressed
the teachers seem, and amazingly do quite well.

If your state is similar, the consequences of not allowing
successful accomodations and testing on faulty computers
fall right back into the lap of those at fault, the school.

In article ,
dragonlady wrote:

Now personally, I think this is an evil thing to do to math. For kids
who are mathematically and not verbally inclined, this takes all the fun
out of math. But anyhow...

My son's verbal skills are fine -- but his math skills are great. He
will look at a problem, and just know the answer. Asking him to show
his work is painful

I'm like your son. For me, part of what was attractive about math was
that there was a right answer. I understand asking students to show
their work. But the kind of essay they were asking grade school
students for is nothing like the kind of mathematically notated
"showing one's work" that is necessary for higher math. To me, it is
trying to take math and make it "more like" reading and writing,
presumably because, as you say, most teachers and administrators are
more verbal/sequential than visual/spatial.

--Robyn

"Robyn Kozierok" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dragonlady wrote:

Now personally, I think this is an evil thing to do to math. For kids
who are mathematically and not verbally inclined, this takes all the
fun
out of math. But anyhow...

My son's verbal skills are fine -- but his math skills are great. He
will look at a problem, and just know the answer. Asking him to show
his work is painful

I'm like your son. For me, part of what was attractive about math was
that there was a right answer. I understand asking students to show
their work. But the kind of essay they were asking grade school
students for is nothing like the kind of mathematically notated
"showing one's work" that is necessary for higher math. To me, it is
trying to take math and make it "more like" reading and writing,
presumably because, as you say, most teachers and administrators are
more verbal/sequential than visual/spatial.

Again, teachers are NOT the ones who make up the state tests!!! Nor are
local administrators. These come from the state level, and most states use
one of a small subset of other tests from national manufacturers-the CAT,
ITBS, TerraNova, or SAT9 are the most common.

Believe me, we don't like them either. But, if the test asks for something
ludicrous like explaining math in words, and we don't teach children to do
it, we know that the students and the whole school, as well as us personally
will pay for that neglect. So we teach the stupid stuff on the test, which
some politician or test manufacturer thought was a good idea, and then get
told every day that it is our fault for making kids do this stuff by
parents, and that it is our fault if we DON'T make kids do this stuff by the
federal and state governments.



--Robyn

"Rosalie" wrote:

I told my daughter to take her best guess for all the questions before
she went and worked the problems out so that all the questions were
answered, because I know that if you have some idea of the answer,
they cannot make a formula that corrects for guessing in a multiple
choice test. (I was taking a course on testing at the time) So she
did that.

Rosalie, could you elaborate a little more on this? I have a daughter who
suffers from pretty strong math anxiety, and I worry that when she takes
tests that make a difference (like ACT/SAT) she'll simply panic and not even
try most of the problems. I know that there are some tests that deduct extra
point for wrong answers, but that if you can narrow the possibilities down
to two (I think that's what I remember hearing) it's still worth guessing.
Any hints about this?

Peggy

--
WWSD ***** What Would Samwise Do?

In article , Peggy Tatyana wrote:
"Rosalie" wrote:

I told my daughter to take her best guess for all the questions before
she went and worked the problems out so that all the questions were
answered, because I know that if you have some idea of the answer,
they cannot make a formula that corrects for guessing in a multiple
choice test. (I was taking a course on testing at the time) So she
did that.

Rosalie, could you elaborate a little more on this? I have a daughter who
suffers from pretty strong math anxiety, and I worry that when she takes
tests that make a difference (like ACT/SAT) she'll simply panic and not even
try most of the problems. I know that there are some tests that deduct extra
point for wrong answers, but that if you can narrow the possibilities down
to two (I think that's what I remember hearing) it's still worth guessing.
Any hints about this?

There are two common ways to score multiple-choice tests. One just
counts the number of right answers, in which case guessing is better
than leaving things blank, because you have a 1/n chance of getting an
n-way multiple choice question right by guessing. Most big tests have
a correction for guessing---a right answer scores 1 and a wrong answer
scores -1/(n-1) so that the average score for random guessing is 0,
the same as leaving the question blank. If, however, you have any
clue at all that some answers are more likely than others (like being
able to rule out one of the answers), then guessing is better than
leaving the question blank. The expected value of your guess gets
better as you apply more information, but for most exam-scoring
systems, any information will make your guess better than on average
than leaving the question blank. (Also, leaving no answers blank
makes it less likely that there will be an off-by-one error in filling
in the bubbles on a separate sheet, for those exams in which the
questions are on a separate sheet from the answer bubbles.)


--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

In article , Donna Metler says...




I'm like your son. For me, part of what was attractive about math was
that there was a right answer. I understand asking students to show
their work. But the kind of essay they were asking grade school
students for is nothing like the kind of mathematically notated
"showing one's work" that is necessary for higher math. To me, it is
trying to take math and make it "more like" reading and writing,
presumably because, as you say, most teachers and administrators are
more verbal/sequential than visual/spatial.

Again, teachers are NOT the ones who make up the state tests!!! Nor are
local administrators. These come from the state level, and most states use
one of a small subset of other tests from national manufacturers-the CAT,
ITBS, TerraNova, or SAT9 are the most common.

Believe me, we don't like them either. But, if the test asks for something
ludicrous like explaining math in words, and we don't teach children to do
it, we know that the students and the whole school, as well as us personally
will pay for that neglect. So we teach the stupid stuff on the test, which
some politician or test manufacturer thought was a good idea, and then get
told every day that it is our fault for making kids do this stuff by
parents, and that it is our fault if we DON'T make kids do this stuff by the
federal and state governments.

I would be more confident that teachers didn't like them either if I had heard
that from any of my son's teachers! What I hear is something along the lines of
"he has to show each step of his thinking - he has to just slow down and realize
how he's thinking". Arrrgh. I'ts been encouraging that some of my son's
teachers (he's in 6th grade) will note different learning styles concerning some
things, but none have addressed this particular problem.

Aren't the test designers drawn from those who are trained in education?
Whether a curriculum is designed locally or at the state level, isn't the
overall problem the same?

Banty

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , Donna Metler
says...




I'm like your son. For me, part of what was attractive about math was
that there was a right answer. I understand asking students to show
their work. But the kind of essay they were asking grade school
students for is nothing like the kind of mathematically notated
"showing one's work" that is necessary for higher math. To me, it is
trying to take math and make it "more like" reading and writing,
presumably because, as you say, most teachers and administrators are
more verbal/sequential than visual/spatial.

Again, teachers are NOT the ones who make up the state tests!!! Nor are
local administrators. These come from the state level, and most states
use
one of a small subset of other tests from national manufacturers-the CAT,
ITBS, TerraNova, or SAT9 are the most common.

Believe me, we don't like them either. But, if the test asks for
something
ludicrous like explaining math in words, and we don't teach children to
do
it, we know that the students and the whole school, as well as us
personally
will pay for that neglect. So we teach the stupid stuff on the test,
which
some politician or test manufacturer thought was a good idea, and then
get
told every day that it is our fault for making kids do this stuff by
parents, and that it is our fault if we DON'T make kids do this stuff by
the
federal and state governments.

I would be more confident that teachers didn't like them either if I had
heard
that from any of my son's teachers! What I hear is something along the
lines of
"he has to show each step of his thinking - he has to just slow down and
realize
how he's thinking". Arrrgh. I'ts been encouraging that some of my son's
teachers (he's in 6th grade) will note different learning styles
concerning some
things, but none have addressed this particular problem.

Aren't the test designers drawn from those who are trained in education?
Whether a curriculum is designed locally or at the state level, isn't the
overall problem the same?

All I can say is, I certainly hope not! I hope that no one trained and
experienced with children would put them through such a mess.

If you go on teacher chat boards like teachers.net, you'll hear a lot of
teachers complaining about the tests. I don't know of a single teacher who
doesn't, even if they agree with the IDEA of having comparative testing,
feel that they're badly made and overused, and not fair to the children. In
general, when we're working, we have to toe the company line, so you
probably won't hear such complaints made directly to parents. but get us
away from schools, and you hear totally different things.

I'm a bit odd in that I'm at a school where the principal has the attitude
that this is a necessary evil, and that it isn't indicative of our students
or school, so we tend to be a bit more vocal because we know the admin isn't
going to shoot us down for it.




Banty

In article ,
Donna Metler wrote:

"Robyn Kozierok" wrote in message
...

But the kind of essay they were asking grade school
students for is nothing like the kind of mathematically notated
"showing one's work" that is necessary for higher math. To me, it is
trying to take math and make it "more like" reading and writing,
presumably because, as you say, most teachers and administrators are
more verbal/sequential than visual/spatial.

Again, teachers are NOT the ones who make up the state tests!!! Nor are
local administrators. These come from the state level

Yes, and I'd bet very good money that the people who come up with state
guidlines that require students to write essays about their math problem
solving are more verbal/sequential than visual/spatial too.

one of a small subset of other tests from national manufacturers-the CAT,
ITBS, TerraNova, or SAT9 are the most common.

Do any of those have non-multiple-choice components for math? The Vermont
standards with which I am most familiar are not based on any nationally
produced test -- they are home-grown but frequently lauded by people who
think other states should test like Vermont does, so beware, such wonderful
testing could be coming soon to a state near you. :-O

Believe me, we don't like them either. But, if the test asks for something
ludicrous like explaining math in words, and we don't teach children to do
it, we know that the students and the whole school, as well as us personally
will pay for that neglect. So we teach the stupid stuff on the test, which
some politician or test manufacturer thought was a good idea, and then get
told every day that it is our fault for making kids do this stuff by
parents, and that it is our fault if we DON'T make kids do this stuff by the
federal and state governments.

I'm well aware of the catch-22 the testing puts local teachers and
administrators in. I think everyone here recognizes that.


--Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)