Thursday, January 5, 2012

What Happens When An Adult Takes a High School Standardized Test?




Read this article from The Washington Post called When An Adult Took Standardized Tests.
Here's an excerpt:
Roach, the father of five children and grandfather of two, was a teacher, counselor and coach in Orange County for 14 years. He was first elected to the board in 1998 and has been reelected three times. A resident of Orange County for three decades, he has a bachelor of science degree in education and two masters degrees: in education and educational psychology. He has trained over 18,000 educators in classroom management and course delivery skills in six eastern states over the last 25 years.
Monday’s post explained how Roach took a version of the FCAT and reached this conclusion in an email to Brady:
“I won’t beat around the bush. The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a ‘D,’ and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.
“It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate. I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities....
“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actuall y been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

3 comments:

  1. OMG! What now? Talk about a failure of the system to teach anything that helps with life skills. What are we teaching our kids? Garbage obviously. Boring garbage at that. No wonder my kid has checked out.

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  2. wow... i'm sure i'd fair just as poorly if not worse. he makes a good point about the tests application relative to the reality of work...

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  3. I recommend that everyone read the FULL article. The bottom line is what I have been saying all along: "It’s ethically unacceptable. Ethically reprehensible. Ethically indefensible." We need not only the principals to stand up for what is right but all stake holders - and that includes you and me!

    Thanks Kerry for keeping us all informed.

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