Both posts are very well thought out. I always mistrust polls and any statistics that don't publish details of their methodology and raw data.
Sometime back I spent some involuntary time in the army. We had to take a number of tests. I answered most of them randomly.
On the IQ test, I really tried h a r d to get all the questions wrong, in the vain that they will think I was an idiot and they let me go (they never did and no-one ever gave me a strange look).
I sympathize with those Oklahoma kids and understand that there many ways to tell a grown-up a 'fuck you' ;)
As an Oklahoman high-schooler, I think the "they made the whole thing up" hypothesis is way more likely. Either that or they got a really unrepresentative sample. I know that at least half of my 2000 student school could have made at least a 6 on that quiz. Not too many people here actively try to buck the system, sadly.
I tend to agree, though my feelings fall more on getting student buy-in. Without some real outcome that matters (a grade, or something similar) what's to insure a reliable sample. Assuming things haven't changed since I was in high school, I'm pretty sure we'd have gone out of our way to skew the test purposely with outrageously wrong answers...
