This morning I read a report in the newspaper claiming that there's a bit of confusion as to why high school students today possess higher GPA's, but are lacking higher scores in the math and reading portions of the NAEP test they were given. Upon completing the article, my first verbal reaction contained the phrase: "Gee, I think I may know why...."
Last year I was one of several students from my high school chosen to take some type of obscure test that possibly had something to do with a national survey. I, nor any of my classmates apparently, weren't exactly well-informed about the purpose of this seemingly time-consuming test, but the largest aspect of it was that we wouldn't be penalized if we didn't do well. *Key phrase: We wouldn't be penalized if we didn't do well.* Here's a bit of background information about how the whole thing was set up at my high school: most of the students selected for the study were the ones who took a good number of advanced-level courses (one can imagine how some students were extremely irked at having to miss out on a class covering AP material.) We were assigned into cramped classrooms, and the instructions were read by a kind elderly woman speaking with a low drawl that seemed incapable of producing coherent sound-waves. We were given the test packet, and off we started.
I really don't believe enough emphasis was put on the significance of the test we were asked to take. My classmates and I were obviously oblivious as to the importance of it. If we knew that our scores would be calculated for a national statistic I'm pretty sure we would have been less excited about the free pencils, and possibly more motivated to actually completely read each question before carelessly diving into the multiple-choice columns. I don't think people even read the writing on the free pencils (I admit I didn't until the test was over), which actually gives a web address with the line "nationsreportcard" embedded somewhere in there. Anyway, before this post gets extremely verbose, I would like to think that most of the high school students elsewhere were better informed. If they weren't, then perhaps this may have been a factor with the little dilemma I read about in the paper this morning.
On the bright side, I still have my free pencil. I'm glad I made the wise choice of not using it while taking any SATs or ACTs in the past year.
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Statistics in general are pretty corrupt. It isn't shocking that these would be altered in such a way. Education is getting less and less about learning and more and more about maintaining some kind of score for some statistic somewhere so we can tell the nation how smart our children are.
Yes, I remember some type of phrase that goes along the lines of "98% of all statistics are made up." Another thought is that there's this constant need to compare this country statistically to other nations.
Wasn't for a reason the school picked students who took many AP classes for the survey.
Yes, my mom told me that when she was in high school they had the first standardized tests and no one told them what they were - she made pictures with the bubbles and got placed in basic classes the next year. Statistics are a joke, because no matter what, students aren't going to do their very best unless something, like a grade or extra credit, is in it for them. Well most anyway.
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
- Albert Einstein
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/blonde-bickerman
i believe i took the same test or one like it. It was given during school but I don't remember much else besides knowing a lot of people guessed to get out of it early because who cares if it didn't effect their grades.
They should make students better prepared for what they are taking so that if they do not wish to take the test it would not make the test inaccurate.
Exactly! There are so many other contributing factors that the statisticians need to think about; in this case, it was how well-informed the students were regarding how their results would be viewed.