Try Some More Sample Assessment Problems

This weekend, I posted a link to an international assessment test in response to a story about a school board member in Florida who tried taking that state's 10th grade assessment test and failing it pretty badly.  I thought that maybe parents would like to try some of the questions being asked of their children.

Today The Washington Post actually developed two short quizzes, one in math and one in reading, from some of the published questions from the FCAT, the actual test that the school board member took.  This allows us to try some of the questions from the test to see if we agree with the board member that the questions were irrelevant to the skills needed after graduation.

I took the reading quiz, and got all seven questions right, which I expected since English and the humanities were my strengths in school.  All seven questions related to analyzing the words and the meanings of two poems, which, while valuable, probably a minority of people do after they complete their formal education.  I would say that the questions related to vocabulary and interpreting literature in general, but they were not directly related to the reading skills most people need in the workplace.  (Note:  I'm not saying the test should necessarily be all about that, but I believe that was the argument that this board member was making.)

Then I took the math quiz, which was my weakest subject in high school, and was pleasantly surprised to get six out of the seven questions right (and the one I got wrong had to do with square roots, and I had no clue what some of the potential answers even meant).  But I think I lucked out on the test questions, because so many of they were graph interpretations or geometry or other math areas that I'm better at than what I think of as hard-core math...like the square root business.  I probably would have done much worse if there had been more questions.  According to the Washington Post, the math questions were also easier as a whole than the reading questions.  But because most of the questions related to ratios or graph interpretation, etc., I think most of these samples were the type of math people use in their post-school life.  Square roots---well, I never use them in "real life" (other than helping my son with his math), but maybe other people have more need for them in their daily affairs.

So, personally, the samples I took seemed like they were appropriate to the age level and setting.  But I would be glad to hear what other people think.  I think it is really important that when we discuss assessment, we have some actual experience of what the assessment questions are like.

The Post also had links to some samples for the state assessment tests in California, New York, Texas, Virginia, and Maryland, so you can check those out as well.

Are You As Smart As A 10th Grader?

If you would like a little taste of current assessment tests, a la board member from yesterday's post, you can click here to get to some sample reading, math, and science questions from the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, global standardized test.  This one is geared towards 15 year olds, which in the US would be the end of the 10th grade.

The test has both questions and answers, so you can see how well you did.  You can share the good news/bad news below, along with any comments you have about how appropriate the questions are.

School Board Member Takes State Standardized Test and Fails

The Answer Sheet educational column in the Washington Post had an interesting article this week.  It dealt with a School Board member in Florida who took that state's standardized test for promotion to the next grade, a test called the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT.  FCAT is one of the oldest of the state assessment test, and has been held up as a model to other states that are newer to this type of high-stakes testing at the state level.

The board member, who is named Rick Roach and is on his fourth term on the Orange County, FL board, had questioned the value of the FCAT and arranged to take the 10th grade version of the test himself for a first-hand experience.  He admitted that out of 60 math questions, he didn't know any of them, but was able to guess correctly about 10 of them.  On the reading section, he only scored 62%, which is a D in their system.

Before you start thinking that this guy is a dumb loser, hear him describe his educational background:

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...

Hmmm.....well, maybe he just forgot what he learned in 10th grade.  However, he seems to be doing just fine without it.  This is his point about the test:

It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually 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.

 Apparently, this experience relates to an argument that Roach has been having with colleagues on his school board.  This year, only 39% of Orange County (home to Orlando, FL and neighboring suburbs) 10th graders passed the reading portion of the FCAT.  Roach simply didn't believe that there were so many students who couldn't read, and began to wonder if the issue was with the test, not with the students' abilities.

Taking the test himself settled the matter for him.  Here are his conclusions about the test (according to the Washington Post)

If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had. 

It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How? 

I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.

I think this is a great perspective on the whole rush-to-tie-everything-to-standardized-testing drive in school reform.