
'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her 8th Grade Students - saulrh
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/23-8
======
lmkg
Standardized tests are optimized for grading.

They are designed to be evaluated quickly, and objectively. Scantrons can be
graded mechanically, and these essays described in the article can be graded
with no thought and a minimum of judgment. These goals, efficiency and
objectivity, impose constraints on how you can test competence, and as far as
I can tell those constraints are simply insurmountable.

I have taken one and exactly one category of standardized test that I
respected, and that was the AP tests. The essay questions for AP Lit was
graded by having three English teachers read the essay and evaluate whether
your answer indicated you understood the meaning of the passage, and how it
relates to the work as a whole. In other words, it was done the hard way. And
it was better than any other standardized test I've ever taken at correlating
performance with understanding.

The problem is scale. Scaling is the only advantage of the current form of
tests, and that's enough. Any replacement is going to have to address scaling.

(My hare-brained solution: Grading essays is what teachers do over summer
vacation. It's enough excess labor to remove that design constraints.)

~~~
sliverstorm
>Grading essays is what teachers do over summer vacation

One of the few perks of being a teacher is the extra vacation time compared to
the rest of us. Cutting into that, with the typically already-poor wages,
doesn't seem like a good plan.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Teacher wages are not that low. I do some math here, read the whole thread (I
made an error in my initial post).

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1673075>

Teachers also have many perks - summer vacation, minimal accountability,
defined-benefit pensions, etc. In fact, a rather significant chunk of
teacher's comp is perks, not pay, far more so than most people in the private
sector.

~~~
wisty
> minimal accountability

Name any job other than "Congressman" in which a single nude photo of you will
put you name in the tabloids and end your career.

~~~
Androsynth
Thats an extreme case. The problem, is that after a certain point in your
career it will take nothing short of that nude photo to get a teacher fired.
No matter how ineffective or incompetent they are.

~~~
wisty
Teachers still have a ton of accountability. They aren't necessarily
accountable to be good teachers, but there's a lot of stuff they are
accountable to do. There's usually a lot of paperwork and all kinds of
requirements.

------
calibraxis
The author mentions Noam Chomsky, and I think he cuts to the point of the
educational system: (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq6lFOhLJ0c>)

Points out that one goal is obedience; and even "stupidity" in the system is
useful, in that if you're willing enough to go along with obviously stupid
orders, you'll pass through to the next level. (In other words, it filters for
obedience.)

Obviously, an educational system reflects the distribution of power in a
society. This is particularly obvious when we observe an official enemy
nation; we have no trouble seeing how they try indoctrinating students along
the interests of those with power. Unfortunately, we're taught to have
blindspots when it comes to our own societies.

There are of course better educational systems. Unlike the model of dumping
knowledge into your empty head, they focus on encouraging the growth of your
natural capacities and internal forces. I suspect that many "autodidacts" are
just people who want to escape the problems of dominant education, with
whatever resources they have.

------
darksaga
This is pretty typical. Slamming the standardised tests, without actually
giving a better alternative. Maybe instead of complaining about this, these
teachers should get together and figure out how to keep from letting so many
kids fail out of the educational system.

Good, bad or indifferent this was the plan of the "no child left behind"
initiative (which had very strong bi-partisan support mind you) which is now
heavily under fire for other reasons.

Its too bad most of the local governments believe throwing money at the
situation is the solution. In the Minneapolis School Districts, they're
spending close to $13K per student. By comparison, in a suburban school
district, they're actually just over $9K per student.

The Minneapolis graduation rate? 49%. The suburban school? 98%.

~~~
kingkilr
An alternative to what? Standardized testing? How about, non-standard testing?
Do we have such a dearth of qualified teachers that we think we need to strip
the people in charge of the classroom of any discretion? What sort of
cognitive dissonance does it take to say, "Gee, this person can teach our kids
the material, but they probably have no ability to evaluate whether the kids
learned it".

~~~
quanticle
What makes you think that your child's teacher is actually _qualified_ to
teach the material that he or she is teaching? Teaching degrees in the United
States are a joke. They consistently attract the dregs of the college
applicant pool.

The fact that standardized tests measure students is a secondary benefit. The
entire point of No Child Left Behind was to identify the worst _teachers_ and
either 1) get them to improve or 2) get them to leave. I wholly agree with
this goal. Unlike most of the people making educational policy, I'm still
young enough to remember my high school experience. I remember math teachers
that didn't know how to solve the problems they assigned. I remember civics
teachers who knew less about the American Revolution than I did. And I didn't
grow up in the inner city. I grew up in a fairly prosperous suburb. My school
was regarded as being in the top 10% of schools in the state. I shudder to
think how bad the teachers are in high poverty schools.

To get at your point more directly, I don't think there's any cognitive
dissonance at all. I think the basic premise is being questioned: "Is this
person qualified to teach our kids the material?" Do I agree with the way
we're measuring how the material is being learned? No. Our current
standardized tests are like yardsticks, rather than calipers. But even a
yardstick is better than guesswork.

~~~
blahedo
> _Teaching degrees in the United States ... consistently attract the dregs of
> the college applicant pool._

I have to take issue with this statement because it unfairly paints an entire
discipline with a broad brush. First of all, I don't think it's true that the
teaching programs are particularly scraping the barrel (I'd pin that on some
other programs, like business and criminal justice), and if it's truly
"consistent" I'd love to see a cite. My suspicion is that the average
intellectual quality of ed majors is about in line with the average student in
general.

Second, even if that subgroup average were lower than the middle of the
general curve, your statement implicates _all_ teachers as bad, and comments
like this contribute to undermining the classroom authority of _all_ of them.
I have no problem with calling out incompetence where it may be found, and
there most certainly are individual incompetent teachers out there---we've all
had a few. But if we paint all teachers as the "dregs" of academia, we make
the job harder for the many competent and the several outstanding teachers
that are also out there.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_I'd love to see a cite._

The common citation is this one:
[http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended...](http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended%20Graduate%20Major.htm)

~~~
blahedo
Ok, now we're talking about grad school, rather than college in general. This
is an entirely different thing than what you seemed to be talking about (and
what I responded to). As a result, we're also talking more about aspiring
administrators rather than people who mostly just want to educate---even
outside the "Education - Administration" specialty, a prime reason to get an
MEd or an EdD is to jump tracks over into an administrative post of some sort.

Even at that, let's be a little careful how much we generalise and where we
sling mud. In the first column in that table, "Computer and Info Sciences"
ranks well below one subcategory of "Education" and only two spots above
another; in the third column, it's below _five_ categories of Education and
tied to four more.

------
wtn
Here are sample exams from past years:

[http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/home....](http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/home.html)

~~~
wizzard
Thanks for finding those. I looked through the 2010 test and the essay
questions specifically say "Use details from the passage to support your
answer." Details, plural, meaning two or more. I'm not seeing essay grading
instructions, but I'm leaning towards thinking this is a bit overblown.

------
tokenadult
Or, in the alternative, learn the rubric, take the silly test according to
that rubric (it looks to me as if any student who is reasonably bright and
really well taught could rapidly learn to produce answers that fit that
rubric), and then write a really well crafted proposal, based on research, for
how to make the test better. An eighth grade class that produced a lot of
students capable of doing that would be very impressive and would get a lot of
attention.

------
narrator
It seems in America we solve our problems in one of two ways:

A. Spending more money indiscriminately. Money always makes everything better.
Just look at health care!

B: Getting the federal government to take over and centralize everything.

Creative ideas are almost always ignored unless they are a means of executing
strategy A or B.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think it is simpler than this, we take an action that we can both take and
demonstrate having taken it, whether or not that solves the problem.

If you are a politician and your constituents are telling you to 'fix
education' you can't create a 'Khan Academy' what you can do is add
requirements that teachers 'do better' and since better is subjective you
create an artificial measure of 'better.' Then you report back that you helped
to 'fix education' when you not only didn't fix it, you didn't even move the
ball down the field.

However this mythical representative didn't have take the hard road of pissing
off some entrenched interests in education in order to change it. Not only
would that cut into next year's re-election budget, there would be nothing
concrete to show for it and a lot of soft money ads in your district saying
how you were bad for education.

------
NaOH
I worked for a publisher of standardized tests for a number of years, though
this company did not develop the assessments used by the State of New York.
What this teacher doesn't seem to appreciate is the process behind how these
tests are written. They are, seemingly by the nature of this society, produced
in a manner which can't capture distinctive teaching styles like this woman
has.

The process of making a test can start with whatever a state legislature has
mandated will be assessed. Mind you, before that, there is all the
negotiations and politicking that takes place. Surprising to most, this
involves state education leaders, business people, religious folks,
politicians, parents, etc. It's a kitchen sink of divergent interests with
everyone claiming to have the best interests of the children at the fore.

Once the legislation is in place and a contractor has been secured to aid with
development, there are loads more meetings and committees deciding what is
appropriate assessment within each subject (math, reading, writing, etc.).
Again, there are loads of different people with loads of different interests,
all of whom believe they are thinking foremost about the children.

It's also in this stage that whatever research or trends in assessment styles
will be considered (though some takes place earlier, too). There's usually a
mentality of "You go first" to new assessment techniques. States are more
willing to try something if another state has already done something similar
and there is publicly available data to support the perceived efficacy.

At the next stage is actual development of the assessment materials. We would
split this up, part of it being done in-house and a bunch contracted to
teachers around the state. Yes, we tried to get teachers from every district.
For the contracted work, this would mean paying teachers to write a number of
questions for a specific test (say, fifth-grade math). These people got paid
for each question they wrote regardless of the quality or usability of what
they submitted.

The worst material to write was probably math simply due to the dry nature of
the subject and the fact that creative approaches to math are usually verboten
in education here. Reading tests were often the most difficult to develop. The
work on the tests wasn't bad, but securing copyright permissions and, often,
permission to edit was brutal. If there was a magazine piece, the
complications were often much worse because usage rights might have to be
secured from multiple parties (publisher, author and photographers).

Mind you, this was also in the late '90s, so the Internet wasn't as useful a
tool for tracking down rights holders or potential materials, and email was
still a secondary means of communication, definitely behind the phone and
often behind the fax, too. Securing rights for all the materials we wanted to
use took months just because of how hard it was to find people and communicate
with them. And states didn't have much of any budget to pay, so securing
rights at minimal cost was a big hurdle. Often, the best pieces were never
used due to how much a rights holder wanted.

So questions would come in from all over the state, then we would clean them
up. That was multi-layered work. It might mean simple grammar and punctuation
fixes, but it also meant correcting the format mandated by the state education
departments. For example, when I was doing this work, states would not allow
us to put a negative in the question. But there were loads of these types of
rules, like making certain there was parallel structure among answer choices,
not having any choices significant;y shorter or longer, etc.

Once we had done an initial tightening of the new bank of material, all the
teachers we'd contracted and state administrators were brought in for a week
of refinement and further development of materials. These were simultaneously
productive and political sessions. A lot of work would be done, but there was
also a lot of on-site jockeying. Teachers would say things like, "This is a
great story, but my kids won't be able to relate to it." State administrators
would hear this a few times about a piece and then pull the material from any
further consideration, not even pilot testing. Quality was often a secondary
consideration to how teachers felt their students would do, and it was
sometimes tertiary to other teacher goals (what they believed was important,
their personal agendas, etc.).

Those last few steps would then repeat themselves. We would tighten up the
work that had been developed, the graphics department would develop
accompanying graphics where needed and handle page layout, proofreading was a
persistent process, and then we would bring the teachers back in for another
review of the nearly final materials.

Then we would do another round of tightening-up the material. Proofing,
requesting minuscule tweaks from the graphics department, getting state
approval for any substantive change (no matter how minor), etc. That was when
we could begin building an actual test using these new materials and existing
questions from previous tests. We'd also begin to development the accompanying
manuals which instructed the schools how to handle the materials and the
teachers how to administer the tests. As you can imagine, these had to be
perfect. When you have a 100-page document with loads of instructions around
specific details, errors are not permissible.

(I haven't done this work in 12 years, but to this day my eyes proofread
nearly everything that comes before them. I can be at a simple restaurant, and
the menu will list "pan fried chicken." I instinctively note the missing
hyphen.)

Of course, all that development work only went to pilot materials. I don't
remember exactly, but a student might take a test that was about 70% questions
that counted and the rest were new questions being evaluated. Once the tests
came back, data analysis was run on everything, enabling us to see what worked
and what didn't. Sometimes a question was too hard or too easy, sometimes one
group of people simply had issues with a question. My memory is hazy, but I
want to say that about one-third of the questions that were piloted became
usable. Maybe 10-20% of them got re-piloted because the data showed a way we
could possibly fix the question (e.g., one of the answer choices was too
attractive, so a re-write of that might be enough of a fix to make the
question worth trying again).

On the other side was the scoring for written questions. We had the state-
issued rubrics, and those were our guiding force. I (and others) would train
the part-time people we hired to do this scoring. The company I worked for
hired these people largely off of a standard bank of psychological
assessments. The company owner felt these gave all the information we needed
to evaluate these potential employees.

Easily, the biggest challenge was getting scorers to accept the rubrics. A
student might write a quality piece about something, but it might have been
well off topic or not sufficiently on topic based on what the state wanted to
assess. During training sessions, I spent a lot of my time diffusing anger
from these people and getting them to focus on the rubrics. Gently humor was
key in that regard, and I don't recall anyone proving to be a long-term
problem in terms of accepting the rubrics.

The other big challenge to this work was the repetition. Reading the answers
to the same questions over and over was mentally challenging for people. I
don't blame them. Most kids of a specific age aren't too creative when fed a
question for a state test. For example, ask them who is a public figure they
admire and why, and you're likely to get the bulk of the answers focusing on
just a few people (athletes, popular music stars, etc.). For the written
assessments, 10% of the student materials were scored twice (by separate
people) to ensure accuracy of grades and as a way to identify issues with
potential scorers.

I've tried to refrain from too much commentary, but there is no doubt that the
materials developed for tests are beaten down throughout the process by
bureaucracy and various interests. It's much like the corporate world when the
firm has way too many meetings in the course of developing something and there
is a leadership vacuum. Oh, sure, there is a person or two who is technically
leading things and may have veto power, but there are far too many diverse
interests for anything of distinct quality to emerge.

With one of the states for which my employer did work, a woman like the
teacher in the link would be invited to participate in the following year's
development. The lead state administrator always referred to this as "getting
that person's buy-in." And truthfully, it seemed to work because the teachers
brought in for this reason felt like they had a voice in the process. None
that I saw seemed to appreciate the depth of the whole process, so they all
seemed to think they had made a difference in the development of the tests.

More specific to the author of the link, she seems like she's probably a good
teacher, better than most. The education system, especially when it comes to
statewide assessments, isn't prepared to appreciably handle outliers like her.
She probably knows that. She probably knows the real battle to change these
kinds of tests is not one she's prepared to tackle. I don't blame her. Nor do
I blame her for making a public critique like she did.

~~~
charlieok
“I told you, didn’t I, about hearing Noam Chomsky speak recently? When the
great man was asked about the chaos in public education, he responded quickly,
decisively, and to the point: “Public education in this country is under
attack.” The words, though chilling, comforted me in a weird way. I’d been
feeling, the past few years of my 30-plus-year tenure in public education,
that there was something or somebody out there, a power of a sort, that
doesn’t really want you kids to be educated. I felt a force that wants you
ignorant and pliable, and that needs you able to fill in the boxes and follow
instructions. Now I’m sure.”

This speaks to a rather odd state of mind on the part of the teacher. “The
great man”?

Believing that the state of education and testing is the result of some
powerful villain behind the curtain requires more credulity than simply
attributing it to the massive complexity and inertia you describe.

~~~
mooneater
what is odd about admiring noam chomsky?

~~~
charlieok
Nothing. I admire him. But I wouldn't cite him in such a hero-worshiping
manner. Doing so would detract from my argument and undermine my credibility.

------
jes5199
Our standardized tests lead classes to a sort of "malicious compliance"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance> \- the tests are So
Important to the schools that everything becomes a cram session, in lieu of
actual teaching and exploring ideas.

It doesn't have to be that way. There are counterexamples:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-
ame...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-
keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/)

[Edit: (Technically it's just Goodhart's Law when there's no malicious intent.
Hard to tell the difference sometimes, though.
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/> ) ]

~~~
waterlesscloud
You see a lot of complaints about standardized tests, but the simple fact of
the matter is that standardized tests are not going away. People want a way to
evaluate student performance in a way that works across many schools,
districts, and states. By definition, that's going to be via standardized
testing. Complaining about them will not help.

Make better tests. Teach better around the tests. Those options are fine. But
implying that the very idea of standardized testing is constricting is a waste
of time. They aren't going anywhere.

~~~
slowpoke
_> People want a way to evaluate student performance in a way that works
across many schools, districts, and states._

Except what they are evaluating holds no meaning. Standardized tests are
nonsense. Tests in general are. What you're measuring isn't knowledge, or
understanding, what you're measuring is compliance to artificial and highly
contrived environments. Which is a pretty useless skill, especially when
compared to a deep understanding of the subject matter.

 _> Teach better around the tests._

By the FSM, NO. Teach around understanding, around critical thinking, logic
and reason. But not around _tests_. This is exactly the kind of teaching that
destroyed any interest I had in subjects that where taught back in school.
There's nothing more frustrating to learn things not because they might be
interesting, or because the deep understanding of the subject might be useful,
but _because they are on the next test_.

Granted, there are subjects where you can't teach "understanding" per se.
History is such a subject. It's based on a lot of numbers, names and places,
most of which are simple facts (WWII happened from 1933-1945 etc). However, I
would argue that this means it's completely useless to do tests on history.
What are you testing? Essentially memorization. Which is a useful skill, but
not one on which a lot of your grades should depend. Especially because a lot
of students spend hours memorizing facts which they will have forgotten a week
after the test, and that time time could have been better spend on sensible
things.

 _> But implying that the very idea of standardized testing is constricting is
a waste of time. They aren't going anywhere._

You're essentially saying that because we can't do much about them makes them
any less useless and constricting. Arguing that the problem can't be solved
doesn't make the problem go away.

~~~
vacri
I am stunned that you think history is just a list of dates. It's an
understanding of motives and events. WWII isn't just "from here to here", it's
_why_ each of the Axis powers did what they did. _why_ the Allied powers did
what they did. It does _not_ matter that Pearl Harbour happened on Dec 7 1941,
what matters is _why_ the Japanese attacked, how it came about. Understanding
both the US and Japanese points of view around that event. Understanding the
different arguments for and against "I have in my hand a piece of paper", of
leibensraum, of making the trains run on time (or at least saying you did)...

An understanding of history is essential to understand both why and how
politics works in the modern day. To toss it all aside as 'dates, names, and
places' is just... uneducated. From the rest of your comment, it sounds like
you're a hard science person doing the usual thoughtless dismissal of the soft
sciences.

~~~
viraptor
I think you're just confirming his position. He says he learnt because the
tests required it. That information is what tests would require - dry facts,
not understanding. And yeah - that would be uneducated. Isn't that why the
tests exists - so that we aren't?

~~~
slowpoke
_> Isn't that why the tests exists - so that we aren't?_

False. Tests don't serve education, they hinder it. That's my entire point.

------
fleitz
This kind of stuff is the backbone of the public education system. John Taylor
Gatto outlines very well the six lessons every student is taught. I think this
fits well with lesson 5:

In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's
measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly
report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread
approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how
dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might
be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records,
the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a
profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about
himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers.

Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever
appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of
report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves
or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials.
People need to be told what they are worth.

<http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html>

------
rubidium
And keep pushing. Keep writing these letters. Keep not accepting things
"because that's just the way it is". Keep getting the news out. Even if it
takes 10 or 30 years.

It's worth it to provide real educations for the current youth of society. It
means a future worth living in.

------
chernevik
The author claims that these stupid and clumsy tests are of "a force that
wants you ignorant and pliable, and that needs you able to fill in the boxes
and follow instructions".

If we're going to believe in some malign conspiracy hindering the public
schools, wouldn't we look for it first in those institutions determining what
does and doesn't happen in those schools? If we compare those institutions'
stated purposes with their interests and actual behaviors, would we find them
self-consistent? admirable? What would happen to their influence if that
analysis were performed more deeply and frequently?

And if we imagined the tools of such a force, what would they be? Control over
the language of debate, insistence on particular assumptions, a particular
orthodoxy of procedure and calculation, prohibition of certain questions as
unnecessary or beside the point?

Would such a force be honest about its aims and methods? Or would it seek to
obscure them, and claim some different, more popular aims?

We might begin looking for this malign 'fungus' by noting these tests were
instituted to establish some accountability. Why exactly was that? And why
were these obviously lousy tools chosen -- what alternatives were discussed,
and why were they rejected?

Yes, I can very well imagine a force, answering that description, wishing to
limit the critical faculties produced by our public schools. I can imagine it
very well indeed.

------
anigbrowl
Well, don't link to or quote from the material under discussion, or gives
examples of any questions or the like - that might leave your readers informed
rather than merely exercised.

~~~
vacri
... you mean the intended audience that has already taken the test? Surely
they're already aware of not just example questions, but the specific ones
asked?

------
warmfuzzykitten
Putting aside for the moment that favorite punching bag - standardized tests -
I question the rather overwrought tone of the piece, beginning with the title:
'A Test You Need to Fail'. This doesn't seem particularly good advice for
students, nor does applauding the kinds of test answers she cites. Anyone
should know that a response like "I don't think it applies to either one" with
no supporting argument to exhibit the slightest knowledge of the subject
would, even must, receive zero credit, with a "SAY WHY!!" scribbled in red in
the margin. Students are very good at holding facile opinions out of
ignorance, and should not be praised for it. Yes, a good teacher can spin a
response like that to gold in the classroom, by eliciting the threads of
actual knowledge upon which the opinion hangs, but a test can hardly do so. I
can understand a teacher lamenting that she didn't know and pass on to her
students that test graders would be looking for facts and not opinions, but
it's not the test's fault she didn't. It is hardly "criminal" that
standardized tests are designed to be objectively gradable. If the questions
are poorly designed - which other commenters seem to have assumed, even though
no evidence for it is presented here - isn't that more likely to be the result
of mediocrity than of malevolence? I was likewise unconvinced by her citation
of Noam Chomsky's remark. However much or little one considers Chomsky a
"great man", one thing he is not is an expert on elementary/secondary
education. He has opinions, like the rest of us. Why not cite the opinions of
Jonas Salk or Stephen Sondheim? Chomsky can, however, be counted upon to state
his opinions in stark, emotionally charged language, and a bit of this
polemical propensity seems to have rubbed off on the (ex-)teacher.

~~~
bluekeybox
I hate to sound McCarthyan, but if a teacher recommends her students to fail
tests while also name-dropping Chomsky and referring to him as "the great man"
in the same text, her ulterior goal can be hardly anything other than
subversion of capitalistic system. Sometimes things are more black-and-white
than we are willing to believe.

------
ScottBurson
Could a voucher system really be worse than this? It would put all the control
back in the hands of the parents. Some would misuse it; we know this. But we
have the Internet now. Surely a Yelp-equivalent for voucher schools would
quickly identify the good and bad schools. Competition would ensue.

Would it be perfect? No. Some parents would prefer religious indoctrination to
actual education. Others simply wouldn't care. But perfection is not the
correct standard. What we have now is _dismal_ and getting worse.

~~~
thisisnotmyname
How exactly do vouchers solve the problem of poorly written standardized
tests?

~~~
ScottBurson
By junking the entire system we have now.

The poorly written standardized tests are just a symptom of a system in which
many people, with various interests, have a say in what and how children are
to be educated. The result is education by committee -- exactly what the OP is
complaining about.

A voucher system would render the educational bureaucracy superfluous. Parents
who thought their kids were being poorly served could move them to a different
school, or start their own school if nothing else were available.

This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Some parents home-school now. There
already exists a small industry providing them with educational materials.

I know, this is a radical idea. It hasn't caught on in the 20 or so years
since it was first seriously floated -- why would it now? But meanwhile the
quality of our kids' education continues to spiral downward. I think the only
possible solutions will be radical ones.

------
ryanoneill
"There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason that it will
never, ever, ever be fixed. ... Because the owners of this country don't want
that. ... They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical
thinking. ... They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to
run their machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively
accept ..." -- George Carlin

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GseyaEibb_4>

------
grannyg00se
I'm definitely not for standardized testing, and I think grade school is more
about subsidized daycare than effective learning. But the letter is a little
bit extreme when suggesting failure of the test. Any sufficiently intelligent
child will be able to express their individuality and creativity outside of
that particular testing environment. While writing the test, you can choose to
recognize what it is, and supply the formulaic answers expected to do well.
Then forget about it and continue being creative an excellent in your other
endeavours.

There are many scenarios in life where you are expected to follow a procedure.
The procedure may not be ideal, and it may even be completely
counterproductive. But you jump through the hoops, and apply yourself to the
expected outcome of the procedure if you want to succeed.

If I were advising my child I would tell them it's nonsense, the adults messed
it up, but try to do well anyway given the rules and expected answers. Playing
along can be an important skill. To be used judiciously.

------
cafard
"ou can compose a “Gettysburg Address” for the 21st century on the apportioned
lines in your test booklet, but if you’ve provided only one fact from the text
you read in preparation, then you will earn only half credit. In your
constructed response—no matter how well written, correct, intelligent, noble,
beautiful, and meaningful it is—if you’ve not collected any specific facts
from the provided readings (even if you happen to know more information about
the chosen topic than the readings provide), then you will get a zero."

I of course wrote Gettysburg addresses routinely in 8th grade English. No
doubt the reporters at the Washington Post did, too, which is why I've
sometimes had to read a story two or three times to find out who did what to
whom. Creativity, ain't it great?

Having said that, I think that the mania for measurement does have little to
do with actual instruction.

------
jcampbell1
I have no way to judge this teacher's letter. It would be really helpful if
the tests were published online, then I could evaluate if this teacher's
waxing poetic has merit. Does anyone have a links to sample questions or a
past test?

Everyone likes to praise or bitch about the testing, but has anyone actually
seen the test?

~~~
lylejohnson
Elsewhere in this thread, user wtn has posted a link to past years' exams.

------
xinliang
Merely complaining about the standard tests does not help. Unless, students
and teachers make a protest against it, eg all students decide to score zero
marks for a national test. But that is very unlikely to happen, some people
are very stubborn about the test system because they get the tricks, they can
do well in it. What a better way of changing the education system is to start
a new private school applying a better education system and to get good
results in a sense that high percent of students become the top leaders in
their arena; to show the education ministry what a better education system is
like ( the education ministry is surely aware of the complaint from the
public, the only reason they have not changed the system yet is that they
really don't what kind of system would be better).

------
jcampbell1
> I will also give you the best advice I can, ... “When they give you lined
> paper, write the other way.”

What the hell does that even mean? If that is your best advice, you are
probably full of bad advice. I cannot comprehend the level of confusion
required to think that quote is clever.

~~~
johngunderman
I interpreted as "write on the paper at a 90 degree angle to the lines" (aka
not the way you should be doing it). This seems to be a standard rehashing of
"going against the grain", advice to be different, to not follow expectations.
That's not what I would necessarily call bad advice.

~~~
Jach
The Esteemed Great Leader pg might say, or rather he did say in
<http://paulgraham.com/hs.html> which I'll just quote:

"Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself
be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I think, is to step
onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they tell you, and don't just
refuse to."

------
cinquemb
If i could i would up vote this to oblivion.

The current system stomps out creativity and meaningful questioning.

And the best part about this, it doesn't stop after highschool. College just
is more BS and more tests. Followed by the promise of mind-numbing jobs and a
weekend existence.

This is me, a student who has had enough the crap.

[http://12most.com/2012/03/21/reasons-for-not-going-back-
to-c...](http://12most.com/2012/03/21/reasons-for-not-going-back-to-college/)

~~~
tikhonj
Hmm, that post does not reflect my college experience _at all_. For one, none
of my tests are about memorization or rote learning--all of them are either
open book or allow you a page or two of notes and all require critical and a
thorough understanding of the material. In fact, a bunch of my tests actually
introduced _new_ material in the questions--the first time I learned about
tries was on a midterm! The question explained what they are and how they
work; I just had to implement them.

My classes also encourage creative thinking. Most of the projects are open-
ended to some degree, and some are almost entirely free. The lectures (at
least for the more advanced courses) tend to be more interactive and involve
thinking as much as listening to the professor.

The people I've met are also different--nobody cares too much about grades and
everybody has side projects and interests outside of classes. Also, quite a
lot of them are absurdly smart and exactly the sort of people I would like to
work with in the future.

And the courses I've taken do provide value: I have a much better breadth in
various subjects than I would had I covered the same material on my own. Also,
I have done a bunch of cool stuff I would not have done on my own, like
designing a simple processor. I would never have thought to do it on my own,
but it has really helped me to understand how computers work.

Also, there are resources (like graduate courses) for getting more depth in
topics I'm interested in. I think I would learn more from talking about papers
and developments with a group (basically how some graduate courses work) than
I would just by reading the same papers on my own. It also provides more
structure and organization, so I don't have to curate what to learn about
myself.

So really, I think you may have had an unfortunate experience with college,
but your criticisms are not entirely universal. College may not be for
everybody, but I think it's the right choice for plenty of people.

~~~
cinquemb
Yeah my experience sucked at this school (school wise, the social experience
is awesome haha), but i've been at two other universities before this and
while my experience there was better, something was missing.

I had side projects too. I think the side projects should be curriculum.

College may not be for everybody, but i think it is the right choice for some
people.

But i found out that outside of school, there are even smarter people than me
as well which is awesome. I won't bound myself to 4 walls and roof away from
home for education.

------
sbmassey
Education is one of the things that democratic states should not get involved
in: there is a troubling feedback loop when a state whose claim to legitimacy
is the votes of it's citizens gets involved in activities which determine what
those votes will be, and education is just such an activity: for the same
reason that there shouldn't be government newspapers or television stations,
there shouldn't be government educators.

------
sreyemhtes
It's truly disgusting what has become of education in the United States. I
know many teachers and all of them are outstanding people and I trust them
fully. Yet it is the system that seems determined to hinder them at every
corner.

------
methoddk
She's 100% right. Standardized testing is a _disease_ to the education in this
country.

The grade school system in this country is nothing but a babysitting program
for people who aren't old enough to vote.

------
mumrah
As I recall the written portion of AP science exams was like this. No prose
necessary - you could just write a bullet list of the required facts and get
full credit

------
bluekeybox
I stopped reading when she mentioned "the great man" Chomsky.

------
tkahn6
Also see, a study done by an MIT professor about SAT essay scores and essay
length.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&position=)

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4634566>

Money quote: "It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the
longer the essay, the higher the score."

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
What better way to qualify people for academia?

