Darned Standardized Tests

In ,
Robyn Kozierok wrote:

*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.

Oh, that would have KILLED me. I see myself as a ten year old writing:

I know... the answer
I need to find out... how to get out of here, I'm SOOOO bored.
I will use... my pencil to write down the answer.

I guess I would have failed. That would have sucked.

h.
--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

"Hillary Israeli" wrote in message
...
In ,
Robyn Kozierok wrote:

*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.

Oh, that would have KILLED me. I see myself as a ten year old writing:

I know... the answer
I need to find out... how to get out of here, I'm SOOOO bored.
I will use... my pencil to write down the answer.

I guess I would have failed. That would have sucked.

Well, I would give full credit-after all, you answered every question!

The scary part is that many of the test resistance sites consider Vermont's
"portfolio" system to be significantly better than multiple choice tests.
But it definitely penalizes the child who doesn't write well, but has an
internal understanding of math.
h.
--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

In article ,
Donna Metler wrote:

Oh, that would have KILLED me. I see myself as a ten year old writing:

I know... the answer
I need to find out... how to get out of here, I'm SOOOO bored.
I will use... my pencil to write down the answer.

I guess I would have failed. That would have sucked.

Somehow they got my writing-averse 8yo to follow the system!

The scary part is that many of the test resistance sites consider Vermont's
"portfolio" system to be significantly better than multiple choice tests.
But it definitely penalizes the child who doesn't write well, but has an
internal understanding of math.

Yes, I'm aware that much of the rest of the country thinks our system
is great. :-O I think that portfolios are, in principle, better than
multiple choice tests, though moreso for writing than math. There are
lots of problems in practice. First is the amount of overhead for
teachers. 4th grade is a giant portfolio year, and it ends up taking
much of the year getting everyone to do X pieces of each required type
of writing and sufficient math problem examples. And like I said, the
math portion really penalizes a lot of the most mathematically inclined
students, many of whom solve math problems in a less linear manner than
the required format expects, and many of whom are also poor and/or
reluctant writers. Every other academic subject in school is
writing-intense. It really bothers me when math is artificially made
to be so as well. fwiw, although I hate the writeup format, I do think
the program which my kids' school used for teaching problem solving was
very good and had kids solving interesting and non-trivial problems in
areas like combinatorics and inferring a general rule from examples.
I was impressed by the caliber of problems the 4th graders could solve
at the end of the school year. They start teaching problem solving
techniques in earnest in 3rd grade.

Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)
--
Support a family business and learn about the technologies underlying
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"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to
work hard at work worth doing." -- Theodore Roosevelt

My husband talked to the teacher over the weekend. The teacher doesn't like
the tests either (no surprise, but wouldn't it be refreshing if they shared
this with the kids??), and he doesn't like that *his* performance is graded in
great
part based on his students' performances on this test. He's following
curriculum and administrator guidelines in his preparation. He has very little
leeway.

That said, it did help to fill him in on why this is challenging Henry so much,
and to remind him of Henry's ADD challenges. He agreed to allow Henry to look
at the "show your work" step as a proof
rather than to actually use work he didn't need to get the actual answer. Last
week he had chided Henry for doing so.

I think it also just helped to have the conversation (he spent 30 minutes with
my husband on the phone). Henry shows a lot of bravado and attitude when he is
at his most vulnerable and it was good to give him the insight that Henry was
nervous. The teacher had no idea (and I'm not surprised).

The teacher claims he never said that if they don't pass these tests they can't
go to 6th grade -- that is likely something Henry picked up as "lore" from
other kids. It was true in 3rd grade and so some kids may believe it is true
each year.

Part of the problem is that Henry is new to the process -- the rest of the
class is in their 3rd year of these tests. Even though Henry took ITBS in
Iowa, he is not familiar with the TAKS, so it's unfamiliar and so is the prep
process. We found the 2003 tests online and seeing those really helped Henry
calm down and realize he can be successful.

The other thing that helped Henry calm down is that "passing" this test
requires just slightly over 50 percent -- in Henry's class they view "passing"
as 70%. He rarely gets below 90%, but he has had a few papers below 70%
(never, ever in math other than these test-prep worksheets) and so the added
confidence of the "buffer" between 53% and 70% is helpful.

Thanks to all for excellent insights, ideas and encouragement!
-Dawn
Mom to Henry, 11

x-no-archive:yes


Kevin Karplus wrote:

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?

It is always worth guessing if you have some idea of the answer. If
you can eliminate one of 4 answers, you have a 1/3rd chance of
guessing right (if my math is correct, which it often is not), and
they will only penalize a wrong answer by 1 in 4 and not one in 3.
There is no formula that will taken into account a semi- guess based
on one or two of the answers having been eliminated.


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.)

Very good explanation. Better than mine.

So I would always tell my own children to answer all the questions if
at all possible. I also would work on reading and comprehension speed
as reading quickly really helps to get through all the test questions.
One of my great advantages on multiple choice tests is that I read
VERY well.

When I take big multi-day multi-session multiple choice tests, I
sometimes start from the back of the booklet and work forward until I
get stuck, and then I start at the front of the booklet and work
backward (i.e. in the normal direction). Sometimes in fact a question
in the early part of the test will actually be answered in the later
part of the test.

I took one test where the first question just blew everyone's mind (it
was unfamiliar vocabulary), and I just used my knowledge of Latin
roots and took a guess and went on. My friends taking the test let
that one question get to them.

My problem with my own children is that for SATs etc they'd get bored
taking the test after an hour or so, and just skip over the last part
random answering. I always wondered how well they could have done had
they actually concentrated on the whole thing. With those tests too,
you have to read the whole question carefully to see that they have
not asked "What is NOT true of xyz", and read all the answers so that
you get down to the last one which is "all of the above" or "none of
the above" (both bad options on the part of the test maker BTW). It
is also sometimes possible to get the correct answer just by picking
the longest response. (Short answers are often false because they
don't take everything into account.)



grandma Rosalie

In article , Rosalie B. wrote:
....
It is always worth guessing if you have some idea of the answer. If
you can eliminate one of 4 answers, you have a 1/3rd chance of
guessing right (if my math is correct, which it often is not), and
they will only penalize a wrong answer by 1 in 4 and not one in 3.
There is no formula that will taken into account a semi- guess based
on one or two of the answers having been eliminated.

Actually, there are such formulas. It is possible for a test maker to
give each answer to a question a different weight, allowing multiple
correct answers, some right answers better than others, and some wrong
answers more wrong than others. It isn't even very difficult to
design such questions and assign weights, but most test designers find
that not worth the effort, so simpler schemes with +1 for the right
answer and either 0 or -1/(n-1) for the wrong answers are most common.

A test designer who really wanted to penalize even informed guessing
could use a scheme in which there was +1 for right answers and -1 for
wrong answers. In such a scheme, one would be better off leaving a
question blank than guessing, even if 2 answers out of 5 could be
eliminated. For very important questions, where guessing could be a
life-or-death matter and an honest I-don't-know is safer, one might
want to penalize wrong answers even more strongly.

If you are going to teach guessing strategies, is is very important to
know how the test is going to be scored.

--
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.

"Kevin Karplus" wrote in message
...
In article , Rosalie B. wrote:

If you are going to teach guessing strategies, is is very important to
know how the test is going to be scored.

Further, it also helps to know how these tests are put together. Typically,
the test maker will put in an answer called the "distracter", that looks
vaguely plausible, but isn't close to being correct. An example I
specifically remember of this from the old SAT vocabulary test is to choose
a synonym for the word, "catholic". One of the offerings is the word
"amass". These words are not synonyms, but there will be someone who has in
their mind the phrase, "Catholic Mass" or a similar association, and get
conned into choosing that answer.

If you can identify and eliminate the distracter from your choices on a
multiple choice test, you've improved your odds even further in the guessing
game.



Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato and .net for .com
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

Typically,
the test maker will put in an answer called the "distracter", that looks
vaguely plausible, but isn't close to being correct.

Oooh, that sounds especially mean-spirited when you consider easily-distracted
kids with ADD.

-Dawn
Still grateful she has a way to go before SAT time...

"Iowacookiemom" wrote in message
...
Typically,
the test maker will put in an answer called the "distracter", that looks
vaguely plausible, but isn't close to being correct.

Oooh, that sounds especially mean-spirited when you consider
easily-distracted
kids with ADD.

-Dawn
Still grateful she has a way to go before SAT time...

DS just took the SATs for the first time a few weeks back, and he commented
on how some of the questions were trick questions. He is very verbal and he
picked up on it right away. He actually liked taking the SAT, which is now
in 3 parts and is very different than when we took it. He found it both
challanging and interesting, although his math skills due to his age weren't
up to par. I'm betting he gets a great verbal score and a mediocre math
score, but that's fine because he just needed the testing for a program.

So, there is hope for the ADHD kid!

Marjorie

In article , Iowacookiemom says...

Typically,
the test maker will put in an answer called the "distracter", that looks
vaguely plausible, but isn't close to being correct.

Oooh, that sounds especially mean-spirited when you consider easily-distracted
kids with ADD.

Well, although it's called a "distractor", I woudln't think it's the kind of
distractor that would especially throw a student with ADD off-track. It's an
answer which is close to right, or seems right, to help determine if the
material is mastered. I don't design tests, but I think it wouldn't do to have
only one plausible answer to each question.

Banty