New job and all
So, my life is still a little insane. Just started the new job, and while I can post to Blogger from work, I can't check my email for this site. So if you write it, I won't be able to read it until the evening.
I have time for a couple of quick hits this evening, before I start working on my statistics lecture. Sigh. My life is too busy. My cable was disconnected last week and it was three days before I realized it was out.
Maryland's getting rid of those old MSPAP tests, and replacing them with the Maryland School Assessment, which will be a mix of multiple-choice questions and longer essay questions. Hmm, interesting. The article says, "Tests in science, social studies and writing are gone; the focus will instead be on reading and math", which I''m sure will set off a few testing critics who think that science and social studies education will be downplayed. Not necessarily - this doesn't mean teachers won't be teaching science, social studies, and writing, just that the kids won't be tested on it. Eventually, there will be a science component to the test. The new MSA is shorter and is supposed to address the concerns of parents who felt that too much time was spent preparing for the MSPAP. The MSA will also provide individual student scores. One interesting quote:
Grasmick was at first reluctant to endorse a multiple-choice test, one completed as children fill in bubbles with No. 2 pencils. They, however, are simpler and cheaper to grade - and will help the state have test results available by the end of the school year in which they are given, starting in 2004. About 25 percent to 30 percent of the test will be essay questions; most of the rest will be multiple-choice..."It's a myth that you can't test higher-order thinking with the multiple-choice questions," said Mark Moody, the assistant state superintendent who oversees testing. "[The questions are] just more difficult to write."
Thank you, Mr. Moody. Multiple-choice items, if slapped together quickly and carelessly, will test only recall, but good multiple-choice items can test higher-order thinking, and will still be more reliable than short-answer or essay questions to boot.
Are states defining down the standards for failing schools? The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) thinks so. Their site has a plethora of interesting testing and education-related articles available on this page. I can't find the link to the lowered-standards story, though, so I will just quote it at length:
STATES ARE DEFINING DOWN FAILING SCHOOLS
The new federal education law lets students leave failing high-poverty schools -- and requires the states to provide free transportation to better schools. But with states in the position of defining failure, states with high standards are punished by having to bus thousands of children to other schools -- while those with low standards aren't, critics observe.
o Low-income eighth-graders in Arkansas, for example, are among the nation's worst readers -- but the law mandates not a single school there to bus children out this year.
o Meanwhile, New York's low-income eighth-graders score seventh-highest in the nation on the national reading test, but because of its high standards federal rules require 19 percent of the state's low-income schools to spend money on transportation to a different school.
o Massachusetts's low-income eighth-graders score about in the middle of the nation in reading, but 24 percent of the state's low-income schools are deemed failures -- so many students are now being bused from "failing" schools that are actually better than schools in other states that are deemed successful.
The federal rules require busing from any school that does not make steady progress toward the state goal, whatever that might be. In Ohio, bizarrely, students could be bused from a school where 70 percent of students were reading-proficient two years in a row to one that showed "progress" by increasing the number of proficient students from 15 percent to 20 percent. So Ohio changed its rules. Now a school just needs 42 percent of its students to reach proficiency. That cut the number of schools subject to the federal busing requirement nearly in half.
The email I received about this ends there; I'm not sure if that's the entire article. I'm not sure if I understand exactly what's going on, either. So, the federal government says "failing" schools must bus to "non-failing" schools, but in practice this means some students at high-performing schools that don't make steep progress are bussed to lower-performing schools that just happen to be improving at a higher rate? Man, no wonder many parents are ready to homeschool.
In other news, our future CEOs might have to face certification exams - The International Certification Institute has now produced an exam for MBA graduates.The exams are apparently supposed to be the business world's equivalent of the medical board or bar exams:
They [ICI] have tried to produce a test that calculates an MBA candidate's understanding of financial reporting, analysis and markets, human behavior in organizations and other universal courses taught within MBA programs during the first year. Second-year business school students concentrate on specialized areas of study...[Test developer W. Michael] Mebane said the purpose of the test is to level the playing field for MBA graduates from programs that rank below the top-tiered schools, while providing corporations and businesses with a gauge to evaluate job candidates. The company recently sent advertising fliers to business schools.
The "chorus of academicians" have, predictably, chimed in with anti-testing commentary:
A chorus of academicians...fear widespread acceptance of a standardized test will result in the International Certification Institute setting the agenda for MBA programs. "If places start to teach the test, that means the people in the testing center have become the most trusted judges of what constitutes an excellent education," said Ann McGill, deputy dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Actually, I shouldn't pick on Dr. McGill, because keeping a close eye on a testing company is never a bad idea. However, no one ever seems to make this complaint about the medical boards or the bar exams, perhaps because the organizations who produce those tests work closely with the medical schools and law schools, perhaps because our culture wants business students to be free to be innovative, while demanding that potential doctors and lawyers learn a specific, narrow set of facts that are relatively easy to test.