tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post5568028185428058039..comments2024-03-27T08:53:29.267-04:00Comments on CURMUDGUCATION: How Is My Test PR Doing?Peter Greenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511193640285760299noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-40023613940675738622016-03-06T13:41:08.153-05:002016-03-06T13:41:08.153-05:00Eric,
My apologies. I understood your question to...Eric,<br /><br />My apologies. I understood your question to presuppose that we did choose to have our child take the test. If it had not been a required test, I think it unlikely we would have gone out of our way to find a test if our son had received an A for that class.<br /><br />As your child becomes older, what you think of your son's performance will become relatively less important than what others think of your son's potential, whether the others are school officials, employers or admissions officers. One result of the high MAP score my son got was that the school principle (it was the highest MAP score he had ever heard about) was very cooperative with the logistics of having our son take his calculus class on the universities schedule and taking several independent studies to prepare for AP exams in classes that were not taught at the high school his junior year. The principle needed more evidence than testimony about his academic potential by his parents.<br /><br />It seems that your concerns about the pretest period is that too much time is spent on test preparation, and from your discrimination sounds largely correct in NC. No real time is spent on test preparation in my state. Post test the problem seems to be that the classes are not sufficiently tracked by ability.<br /><br />Chapel Hill is about 60% female under the current admission standards. If standardized test scores are ignored and only teacher assigned grades are used in admission, it will become even more female dominated because teacher assigned grades favor women while standardized test scores favor men. In a world where I think academic ability is likely to be equally distributed across the sexes, changing admission policies to more heavily favor women would be a wast of male talent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-25745264610928656052016-03-06T08:10:33.716-05:002016-03-06T08:10:33.716-05:00You didn't answer my question. If you son had ...You didn't answer my question. If you son had had an A in the course and the MAP test was not required, would you have bothered with a standardized test? <br /><br />I have a child who always scores nearly 100% on everything in math. He is forced to take standardized math tests every year, and every year he gets 99%. What is the point? From his grades and my knowledge of his abilities, I already know what I need to know. This is a complete waste of time and does not give me additional information. (The idea that all parents don't know what their children are capable of without the school grades or the test scores is ridiculous. I'm sure that you already knew that your son was very good at math.) <br /><br />In your case, perhaps the test did give you some information. But we don't need to test every child every year for you to get that information. Optional testing would do that. Also, sampling would give school districts, states, and the federal government all the information that they need. There simply is no need to test every child every year in addition to all the other work that they are doing at school. The testing regimes that we are using are redundant and largely unnecessary. <br /><br />I live in North Carolina, and the end-grade-testing wastes about 7-8 weeks of instruction in grades 3-8 every year. The testing itself takes up an entire week. The four or five weeks before that a spent on mindless test prep. The more advanced kids are bored out of their minds doing grade level worksheets on material that they have already mastered. After the test, the last two weeks of class are spent tutoring the students who failed the tests. Those who passed watch Disney movies. Very educational. <br /><br />As for colleges, many are going test-optional. These colleges seem to have no problem using transcripts, and the test optional policy allows students who test well but have poorer grades to show what they can do. It's a win-win. I'd love to see test-optional spread so that some families can simply avoid wasting money on unnecessary tests and test prep. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07228908566250306699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-77163411206632338052016-03-05T23:22:40.178-05:002016-03-05T23:22:40.178-05:00"Then I cried. And hugged him close, and got ..."Then I cried. And hugged him close, and got my t-shirt sopping wet, water all over the floor, and hugged him again, as tight and as close to me as I could. I told him I loved him, immeasurably grateful to him for his love, his trust, and his dreams."<br /><br /><br />Aaaarrrggg! So we are to understand that the engine of ka-ching, ka-ching that is testing has come about because of the angst of the upper middle class of how their tiny precious one might fare out in the cold, cruel world. Also, I like how "Carla" drops in the bit about her wife giving the bath while Carla collapses on the bed, overwhelmed by the stresses of her workday: "So as I’m thinking about my day—kids, schools, tests, teachers, homework, and my overflowing inbox..." One might get the impression that Carla is a real live teacher who is gay! But nah, not. I think Carla is faux, I think Carla's wife is faux, I think Tomás is faux. I think the entire website is written by a computer algorithm programmed to churn out content for people with first world problems - all of which can be solved by some testing.<br /><br />laMissyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00516322307725011313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-38017056708080328122016-03-05T18:55:14.227-05:002016-03-05T18:55:14.227-05:00Eric,
The MAP exam is the required exam in my sta...Eric,<br /><br />The MAP exam is the required exam in my state, so there was no choice. Had he received an A in the class along with the MAP score, we probably would have thought the third opinion unnecessary.<br /><br />Mast3rShake,<br /><br />The teacher of that class was so very experienced that he retired and left the school before grades were released. In any case, a B- SHOULD indicate that a young student is not ready to skip over AP calculus in the high school and take the serious calculus sequence offered by a research one university. <br /><br />You do raise an interesting point: what do teacher's grades mean about a student. How can a college evaluate a student's transcript without speaking to every teacher about every grade they gave? A portfolio of external tests provides a second view. After all, your interpretation of a B- combined with a nearly perfect MAP exam is different from your interpretation of a B- and a poor MAP exam score, or a B- by itself, right?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-60686957662163670572016-03-05T17:11:09.103-05:002016-03-05T17:11:09.103-05:00Shouldn't your "second opinion," ass...Shouldn't your "second opinion," assuming the first opinion you received was simply a letter of the alphabet, have been an actual explanation from the teacher of what he or she is seeing with your child and how his grade has come to be represented by a B? A simple conversation may have cleared it all up. Mast3rShakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02278025523226442017noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-67136327170632865182016-03-05T16:40:35.712-05:002016-03-05T16:40:35.712-05:00If your son had been earning an A, would you have ...If your son had been earning an A, would you have still had him take the test? <br /><br /> Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07228908566250306699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-60141488977744880502016-03-05T09:27:54.590-05:002016-03-05T09:27:54.590-05:00Just like getting a second opinion about medical p...Just like getting a second opinion about medical procedures, it is a good idea to get a second opinion about a student's academic preparation. Second and third opinions are always useful, and if your physician argues you not to seek out a second opinion, you should find another physician.<br /><br />I certainly agree that there is not one true path to anything, but that leads me to the conclusion that teacher assigned grades are not the one true way to learn about student preparation. Here I can cite a personal story. My middle son was, we thought, very advanced in mathematics but received a B- in his pre-calculus mathematics class. We had been planning to pull him out of mathematics at our local public high school and have him begin taking classes at our local university. The B- meant that we had to entertain the possibility that this would be a great mistake, so we needed a second and finally third opinion. The second opinion was the MAP mathematics test. My son got within 2 points of a perfect score. Now which to believe was the true assessment of mathematics ability? The B- in the pre-calculus class or the near perfect score in the standardized test? Time for a third opinion. We asked a friend, a full professor of mathematics at our local university, to have a conversation about mathematics with our son. After that conversation she said he was obviously well prepared to take the challenging ten credit hour science engineering calculus sequence, and as it turned out, she was right. The took his first graduate class in mathematics the next year.<br /><br />It would have been a huge disservice to our son to depend on the teacher assigned grade as the one and only true evaluation of his mathematics ability.<br /><br />The importance of a second opinion is very important for boys. Boys score higher on standardized tests than their grades would predict, most strongly for African American boys.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-4685812622310007762016-03-05T08:10:38.698-05:002016-03-05T08:10:38.698-05:00They've banned some people from their FB page....They've banned some people from their FB page. LOL For one person, it took one post. I picture some recent college grad thinking managing their message is going to be a cakewalk and then is met with, well, us. Julie Borsthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15205661029847875010noreply@blogger.com