You may have seen articles in the NYT and WSJ (and elsewhere) about a question given on the NYS eighth grade English Language Arts standardized test.
You may have also seen a blog posting from The Happy Scientist, a Florida blogger who was preparing questions to aid students taking the science Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the FL equivalent of Connecticut’s CMTs. He presented some interesting findings, and even more interesting feedback from state education officials.
My comment was:
My brother is a former Florida public school teacher, who went on to private, parochial, prison and military schools (the prisoners were the most-well behaved). He had similar concerns about standardized tests.
Two comments:
1. while it is a possible defense to say that the students should not know this or that at the fifth grade level (see comment 2), thereby eliminating a correct response, why not simply come up with three responses that are clearly not (scientifically) correct? Yes, there is always going to be one or two that slip through, or there will be a scientist or mathematician who can posit some reasonable test or answer (as some of your knowledgeable readers have shown), but any reasonable review process by real scientists or good science teachers would at least indicate which answers/definitions need to be examined in more depth before inclusion.
1. while it is a possible defense to say that the students should not know this or that at the fifth grade level (see comment 2), thereby eliminating a correct response, why not simply come up with three responses that are clearly not (scientifically) correct? Yes, there is always going to be one or two that slip through, or there will be a scientist or mathematician who can posit some reasonable test or answer (as some of your knowledgeable readers have shown), but any reasonable review process by real scientists or good science teachers would at least indicate which answers/definitions need to be examined in more depth before inclusion.
2. the state administrator's response that students should not know X, since it is not in the standards for fifth grade, is reflective of what I call the RTTM (Race to the Middle). The thinking is that we only need to get all of our students to the NCLB "Proficient" level (as it is called here in Connecticut), so any effort beyond that (Gifted and Talented, Advanced Learning, self study, good teaching, etc.) is a waste of time and money. Yet everyone is focused on college readiness and on preparing students for the STEM subjects. Proficient does not begin to cut it if one is interested in engineering, especially when many of the state standardized tests actually award Proficient level status for what the NAEP Math and ELA would consider Basic or Below Basic.
Check out the Math and Reading NAEP vs. state test comparisons:
One question: has anyone actually had experience in using FOIA to get access to the test questions?
So, what’s your point, Brian? Well, this certainly couldn’t happen here in Connecticut, could it? Our daughter brought home a practice test for the third grade CMT Mathematics test. Of the 56 problems on the test, six were estimation problems, three relating to arithmetic operations and three relating to measurement. Why pick on estimation problems? This is one of the strands, as mentioned before, with which our students have a difficult time and (coincidentally?) on which Everyday Math places much emphasis. Not wanting to blame everything on Everyday Math (although my office is still a mess), I wanted to see if there was another explanation for the relatively low scores on this strand.
In examining the three arithmetic operations questions, one was ambiguous (i.e., two of the answers could be correct, depending on how you interpreted the question), one was unambiguous only because the two interpretations yielded the same answer, and one was clearly written. See if you agree with my thinking.
Question 1: What is the closest estimate of $54 - $38? Round to the nearest ten.
A. $10
B. $20
C. $30
D. $90
The answer is A, because you round the 54 to 50 and the 38 to 40, and then subtract. My daughter put down B, and I agreed with her, since the actual difference of $16 rounds to $20. I can understand both answers, which is actually the problem. The wording is poor, as either answer would be defendable.
Question 2: What is the best estimate of 64 + 77?
A. 130
B. 140
C. 169
D. 180
Only 140 would fit both possible interpretations (round first then add, or add first then round). Interestingly, no instructions are given for rounding, as in the first problem above. So my vote is for ambiguous wording.
Question 3: There are 48 pencils and 53 pens in the school supply closet. Round the numbers to the nearest 10 to estimate the total number of pencils and pens in the closet.
A. 80
B. 90
C. 100
D. 110
Much better wording here, including the clarifying word “numbers” indicating that rounding comes first. If the first problem had said “Round the numbers to the nearest ten.” most of the ambiguity would have been removed.
I may be off-base on the first problem, as our children are taught (I hope) to round, then subtract or add (that is the useful skill). This review raises three questions in my mind: First, why make it confusing by having two possible correct answers, and providing insufficient wording to draw a single conclusion? Second, why is there different wording between problem 1 and problem 2? And third, if the first problem confuses a Math ALP student, what percent of other students are going to be confused (especially since they are learning using Everyday Math)?
The point is that with only a quick look at a practice test, presumably based on actual test guidelines, I was able to find some ambiguous questions (or answers). Maybe we have an issue, like Florida and New York. To be fair, the example tests problems on the CSDE site appear well written. So this might be a one-off issue with a bad practice test, and the real tests are okay. But doesn’t that mean that the low strand scores are due to something else, like Everyday Math?
And don’t forget that one of the reasons Everyday Math focuses on estimation is so that the students can check the results of their calculations when they use a calculator. If we eliminate calculators from K-5 (like Texas wants to: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Early-math-lesson-Put-calculators-aside-3496172.php), not only would we have students who could do their basic calculations better, but we wouldn’t have to spend so much time on estimation. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
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