The case for standardized testing in schools is better than the case for standardized testing at universities. That’s why someone wanting to push standardized testing starts at schools.
Bush’s no-child-left-behind legislation is very unpopular. That’s why no politician goes and tries to do the same for universities.
A large part of why we have the standardized testing that we have is that business lobbyists wanted it. Companies want to have grading that let’s them easily compare applicants from different universities.The Gates foundation pushes the relevant ideas.
At the same time it reeks of political suicide for a politician to simply go out and declare that universities degrees should be completely replaced by standardized testing at this point in time.
Bush’s no-child-left-behind legislation is very unpopular.
Why specifically? (I am not an American, I know almost nothing about it.) In my country, when I hear objections against tests, it seems to me they fall into two categories:
a) specific flaws of the tests or the testing process;
b) claims that education is inherently mysterious and thus cannot be measured.
To which my obvious response is that “a)” is a reason to fix the tests, not to throw them away, and “b)” is nonsense. (There are specific problems with testing some things on paper, for example those that require lab work, or playing a musical instrument, writing an essay, etc.)
Specifically:
A child may be exceptionally tired or sick one day, which would disproportionally impact their grades. -- The child should be able to take their tests again, and again.
The tests only check memorization, not understanding. -- Devise tests that do check understanding.
Teachers try to teach only the subsets that are covered by the tests, and skip the subsets not covered by the tests. -- All subsets should be covered by the test. That does not mean that the test will have 1000 questions; it can have 30 questions which will be at the last minute randomly selected from the database of the 1000 questions.
Some lessons may be optional, e.g. for schools that specialize in the subject. Standardized testing will make teachers ignore the optional parts, as they will not be part of the tests. -- Make tests for the mandatory parts, and separate tests for the optional parts.
b) claims that education is inherently mysterious and thus cannot be measured.
The issue isn’t so much whether it can be measured but whether it can be measured in a way that removes the teachers subjective expertise.
The world debating championships are held in the rule set of British parliamentary debate. It’s clearly possible to measure the performance of a team in the sense that you can tell which team is the first place, which the second, third and forth. On the other hand the professes depends heavily on the expertise of the jurors. There no clear scoring card where you check whether the participants successfully delivered the passwords to the questions.
You move from judging the quality of arguments to checking for passwords if you force a fixed evaluation criteria.
Teachers try to teach only the subsets that are covered by the tests, and skip the subsets not covered by the tests. -- All subsets should be covered by the test.
You judge standardized testing by the effect it has in practice and not by some intellectual construct of how the world is supposed to be.
There are also other arguments for which I don’t have time at the moment.
This actually generalises beyond mathematics quite well—rather than ask people to describe a theory let them apply the theory to an example (perhaps even an example that actually happened).
As I haven’t encountered this too often in practice (outside of mathematics, where proving for an exam is the rule rather than the exception) the obvious question is: why isn’t this being used?
the obvious question is: why isn’t this being used?
These are the moments when I am not sure… the obvious answer is “because people are mostly insane”… but then I feel guilty for thinking about this… but even after reflection this seems like the most likely explanation. (Okay, I could use more polite words and replace “insane” by “having really fucked up epistemic habits”. Just to emphasise that the problem isn’t in their hardware, it’s just the software that is completely crap.)
A random data point: When I studied psychology, when we learned about Freud’s ego-defense mechanisms, I was like: wow, this is finally something you could make a “math-style” exam about. (Okay, I know Freud is unpopular here, but please suspend your judgement for the sake of argument.) Because the ego-defense mechanisms have a relatively clear definition. E.g., someone says: “you ” and you reply: “no, you and !!!” (without there being any evidence for the other person ); this is called “projection”. Or, someone says: “you ”, and you reply: “no, actually I ” (without any evidence for , and actually some evidence for ), that’s called “reaction formation”. Etc.
So I was like: This is perfect. Here is how I would make an exam: Write a short story illustrating a use of an ego-defense mechanism, and then ask which of the mechanisms it was. That should be super easy, like elementary-school difficulty, and yet would help to connect the definition with a specific example (which some of my classmates had a problem to do; they just memorized the list of names of the ego-defense mechanisms, without attaching any specific meaning to those words; because memorizing lists was the generally used strategy there). I tried to explain this idea to some classmates, I tried to explain it to a teacher… no success. The typical response was something like: “Yes, such a thing could be done, but what’s the point? How is that an improvement over memorizing the list of names? It just takes more time to do.” (Except for one girl who studied both psychology and math, and she said: “Yes! Obviously, that’s how it should be done.”)
So, my conclusion is that some people are so epistemically challenged that they don’t even understand the difference between understanding something and not understanding but remembering the passwords. (Did I say “some people”? I meant a huge majority of people, including a huge majority of people with university education, including a huge majority of people who specifically study human thinking and/or education at the university!)
Things like this leave me sad about the mental state of the humankind. (And then I read an alternative explanation, that it’s all just a cultish influence of LW making me intolerant towards non-rationalists. No, it’s a fucking epistemic abyss. The only thing LW did to me was to point a finger to that abyss and say: “Yeah, we see it, too. You are not halucinating. It really is bad.”)
The case for standardized testing in schools is better than the case for standardized testing at universities. That’s why someone wanting to push standardized testing starts at schools.
Bush’s no-child-left-behind legislation is very unpopular. That’s why no politician goes and tries to do the same for universities.
A large part of why we have the standardized testing that we have is that business lobbyists wanted it. Companies want to have grading that let’s them easily compare applicants from different universities.The Gates foundation pushes the relevant ideas. At the same time it reeks of political suicide for a politician to simply go out and declare that universities degrees should be completely replaced by standardized testing at this point in time.
Why specifically? (I am not an American, I know almost nothing about it.) In my country, when I hear objections against tests, it seems to me they fall into two categories:
a) specific flaws of the tests or the testing process;
b) claims that education is inherently mysterious and thus cannot be measured.
To which my obvious response is that “a)” is a reason to fix the tests, not to throw them away, and “b)” is nonsense. (There are specific problems with testing some things on paper, for example those that require lab work, or playing a musical instrument, writing an essay, etc.)
Specifically:
A child may be exceptionally tired or sick one day, which would disproportionally impact their grades. -- The child should be able to take their tests again, and again.
The tests only check memorization, not understanding. -- Devise tests that do check understanding.
Teachers try to teach only the subsets that are covered by the tests, and skip the subsets not covered by the tests. -- All subsets should be covered by the test. That does not mean that the test will have 1000 questions; it can have 30 questions which will be at the last minute randomly selected from the database of the 1000 questions.
Some lessons may be optional, e.g. for schools that specialize in the subject. Standardized testing will make teachers ignore the optional parts, as they will not be part of the tests. -- Make tests for the mandatory parts, and separate tests for the optional parts.
The issue isn’t so much whether it can be measured but whether it can be measured in a way that removes the teachers subjective expertise. The world debating championships are held in the rule set of British parliamentary debate. It’s clearly possible to measure the performance of a team in the sense that you can tell which team is the first place, which the second, third and forth. On the other hand the professes depends heavily on the expertise of the jurors. There no clear scoring card where you check whether the participants successfully delivered the passwords to the questions.
You move from judging the quality of arguments to checking for passwords if you force a fixed evaluation criteria.
You judge standardized testing by the effect it has in practice and not by some intellectual construct of how the world is supposed to be.
There are also other arguments for which I don’t have time at the moment.
In mathematics, you can have people solve a problem, which is not just repeating the right password, but actually using the knowledge.
But this is probably exceptional for mathematics. :(
This actually generalises beyond mathematics quite well—rather than ask people to describe a theory let them apply the theory to an example (perhaps even an example that actually happened).
As I haven’t encountered this too often in practice (outside of mathematics, where proving for an exam is the rule rather than the exception) the obvious question is: why isn’t this being used?
These are the moments when I am not sure… the obvious answer is “because people are mostly insane”… but then I feel guilty for thinking about this… but even after reflection this seems like the most likely explanation. (Okay, I could use more polite words and replace “insane” by “having really fucked up epistemic habits”. Just to emphasise that the problem isn’t in their hardware, it’s just the software that is completely crap.)
A random data point: When I studied psychology, when we learned about Freud’s ego-defense mechanisms, I was like: wow, this is finally something you could make a “math-style” exam about. (Okay, I know Freud is unpopular here, but please suspend your judgement for the sake of argument.) Because the ego-defense mechanisms have a relatively clear definition. E.g., someone says: “you ” and you reply: “no, you and !!!” (without there being any evidence for the other person ); this is called “projection”. Or, someone says: “you ”, and you reply: “no, actually I ” (without any evidence for , and actually some evidence for ), that’s called “reaction formation”. Etc.
So I was like: This is perfect. Here is how I would make an exam: Write a short story illustrating a use of an ego-defense mechanism, and then ask which of the mechanisms it was. That should be super easy, like elementary-school difficulty, and yet would help to connect the definition with a specific example (which some of my classmates had a problem to do; they just memorized the list of names of the ego-defense mechanisms, without attaching any specific meaning to those words; because memorizing lists was the generally used strategy there). I tried to explain this idea to some classmates, I tried to explain it to a teacher… no success. The typical response was something like: “Yes, such a thing could be done, but what’s the point? How is that an improvement over memorizing the list of names? It just takes more time to do.” (Except for one girl who studied both psychology and math, and she said: “Yes! Obviously, that’s how it should be done.”)
So, my conclusion is that some people are so epistemically challenged that they don’t even understand the difference between understanding something and not understanding but remembering the passwords. (Did I say “some people”? I meant a huge majority of people, including a huge majority of people with university education, including a huge majority of people who specifically study human thinking and/or education at the university!)
Things like this leave me sad about the mental state of the humankind. (And then I read an alternative explanation, that it’s all just a cultish influence of LW making me intolerant towards non-rationalists. No, it’s a fucking epistemic abyss. The only thing LW did to me was to point a finger to that abyss and say: “Yeah, we see it, too. You are not halucinating. It really is bad.”)