Number 2 Pencil

Strange rules, mate

I had to struggle with the Australian English to understand the headline, but if I read this correctly, people are unhappy that Western Australia's official English exam is being dumbed down:

Authors and academics have criticised Western Australia's new English exam for making spelling and grammar optional extras in written expression. Fremantle Arts Centre Press publisher Ray Coffey said yesterday punctuation and grammar were critical to written language.

Mr Coffey, who publishes texts included on the WA English syllabus, said syntax, sentence structure and grammar had been taught to increasingly lower levels over the decades but they remained a crucial part of the language. "Educationalists aren't locked in a time warp," Mr Coffey said. "(Methods) may vary from the kind of approach we grew up with but expression and communication to others is a cornerstone (in education)," he said.

The Curriculum Council of WA's sample English exam for 2007 does not penalise students for incorrect punctuation or spelling and allows them to draw answers or respond in dot points.

Er, um, what do you mean, "draw" answers? Is this an English exam, or isn't it? How useful is it to test English reading comprehension if the examinee isn't required to communicate back in standard English? I went all over the CC/WACE website, but I'll be damned if I can find this information in any scoring rubrics. There is a nifty sample English exam here, which mentions that examinees can bring dictionaries and thesauruses to the exam.

If they can bring dictionaries, they should be required to spell correctly.

Big changes in Norway

There's only one way in Norway, at least in the education world:

The government minister in charge of education, Øystein Djupedal, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Tuesday that no new applications for private schools would be evaluated. He said the government will also reverse earlier preliminary approval for new private schools, meaning they won't be allowed to open.

Djupedal's initiative will block the opening of as many as 150 new private schools in Norway.

What's wrong with private schools? Well, those schools might want test their students, and Djupedal is having none of that:

Minister of Knowledge Øystein Djupedal announced Thursday that there would be no national exams for grades 1-9 this year. "The job of creating better tests is in progress," Djupedal told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).

The minister has yet to decide if tenth graders - the final year of obligatory schooling - and videregående schools roughly equivalent to high schools or sixth forms, will have to take new national exams next autumn.

I'd love to hear what that criticism was. Were the tests really so bad that that only option was cancelling them? Or were these tests the only determinant of grades that students receive each year, as with Norway's college grading system? Or is this an indication of a growing anti-testing opinion, promises about new and improved tests notwithstanding?

(Hat tip: Mark S.)

Doing things differently but aiming for the same target

A US teacher visiting Japan notes that we're heading in opposite directions, but towards the same goals:

[Sarah] Folzenlogen and 200 other American teachers spent three weeks in Japan as part of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program. They examined the country's education system and compared it to ones in the United States...

One of the issues Folzenlogen learned about was Japan's desire to move away from standardized testing and more toward creative thinking. "They have a test students take in the ninth grade to determine what high school they will attend," she said. "They're trying to get away from test-based knowledge to innovation and problem solving."

Students oftentimes spend several hours after school reading and memorizing information. They all strive to do well on their high school entrance exam. This exam will determine where they attend high school and later college.

Although Japan ranks highly in the world for factual knowledge, it is falling behind in critical thinking and originality. Kevin Lydy, a teacher at the academy, said the focus on group welfare may impede individual critical success. "Over here in the U.S. it's me, me, me," he said. "There it's more about the group. It's a matter of finding students who are creative, not afraid to give their responses."

This country now is trying to target standardized testing through No Child Left Behind to improve its base knowledge. "We're two countries with the same goal going in opposite directions," said Lydy.

Test scores up, and teachers are angry?

In Ontario, the test scores have risen, but the tests are under fire:

Standardized test scores released Wednesday show Ontario students are improving, but the elementary teachers' federation says the tests are a waste of money while the NDP says the politicians "cheated."

The 2004-05 tests found that 59 per cent of Grade 3 students met or surpassed the provincial standard in reading (up five per cent from the previous year). The result was 61 per cent in writing (up three per cent) and 66 per cent in math (up 2 per cent). The Grade 6 results also show improvements...

So what's the problem? The teachers' foundation says the resources used for tests would be better spent on instructional support. The "cheating" charge flows from recent changes to the test that included shortening the length and allowing more calculator usage. Could this have made the items easier? Most definitely, if this exam was not equated to earlier ones to account for the changed rules. Depending on the extent of the modifications, one could argue that the exam has changed so dramatically that this year can't really be compared with previous years, even after equating has been done.

I just offed Grandma - does that get me 5% extra on my score?

Devoted Reader Jim sends along a tip which he calls "tailor-made for N2P." It's filed under the "Can't Possibly Be True" section of "News of the Weird," and I can see why.

Official guidelines issued in May by Britain's Joint Council on Qualifications, directed to agencies that administer high school and junior-high standardized tests, call for students to receive extra points on the test if they have experienced pre-exam stress due to selected circumstances: death of a parent or close relative (up to 5 percent extra), death of other relative (up to 4 percent), death of pet (2 percent if on exam day, 1 percent if the day before), witnessing a distressing event on exam day (up to 3 percent), just-broken arm or leg (up to 3 percent), headache (1 percent).

The JCQ site, which is rather precious in a British sort of way, has a page listing the various documents of official guidelines. I couldn't find anything related to this on there, nor could I find it in the press releases. Of course, I haven't had time to wade through everything.

If true, however, the JCQ has just handed students a loophole the size of Lake Michigan. They might as well give everyone 1% off the top, to ward off the deluge of headache claims. And if they're really interested in cutting students a break, I'd say a 5% gimme isn't quite enough for someone who became an orphan two days before the exam.

But then there's "witnessing a distressing event on exam day." The heck? Distress, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, so the JCQ will be hard-pressed to prove that something really didn't distress examinees. For example, this morning, driving to work, I saw a woman wearing skin-tight denim shorts who should not have been wearing anything skin-tight, denim, or short. The vision was that of a normal-sized female torso perched across a blue-jeaned billboard. I'd swear on a Bible that that sight was distressing. If the shorts had had writing on the bum, even more so.

A free pass on spelling errors

Those of you upset by the new SAT's essay section will be apoplectic when you hear that raters of the longer writing task of an exam for British 14-year-olds will no longer count off for spelling errors:

Examiners marking an English test taken by 600,000 14-year-olds have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks. The rule, issued by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, means that pupils could spell every word wrongly in the most significant piece of writing that they are required to do and yet still receive full marks.

Horrible, yet a tad hyperbolic. Spelling ability is not totally unrelated to other areas of writing ability, so it's unlikely that a student who spells three-letter words wrong will gain high marks for sentence structure, organization, and punctuation. The student who does perfectly except for spelling errors will most likely be that brilliant child whose brain remembers words in an, er, creative sense (yes, Devoted Reader J, I'm talking to you!). My guess is that most papers riddled with spelling errors will be riddled with all kinds of other errors as well.

However, one can argue - as the traditionalists are now doing - that it's dangerous not to grade spelling because it sends the message that spelling isn't important:

The revelation of the "spelling free-for-all" in the hour-long paper has angered traditionalists who say that children should be penalised for poor spelling. Nick Seaton, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: "Spelling and grammar are essential to good English and important in other subjects. The exam watchdog should be ensuring that proper marks are given for these. Not judging spelling on such an important paper sends the message to teacher and pupils that it does not matter, and that is certainly what employers are finding."

Andrew Cunningham, an English teacher at Charterhouse and a former GCSE examiner, agreed that poor spelling was not being tackled. "This downgrading of spelling does not surprise me. All teachers are having to spend time going over these basics, which should have been sorted out at an earlier age."

Don't forget your карандаш номер 2!

A new revolution in Georgia - the admissions testing revolution:

In the United States, high school juniors are busy attending prep classes and memorizing lists of vocabulary words to prepare for their SAT exams. In post-Soviet Georgia, however, students aren't sure exactly what to do. This Sunday, a selected number of Georgian high school students will be taking a pilot version of a new standardized exam designed to determine which students will be admitted to the country's universities.

The actual exam will be administered in July and will mark a milestone for Georgia. Never before has a standardized national exam been linked to university admissions. Many Georgians are not sure they're going to like the new system.

That proves it - Georgians and Americans are similar! Soon to come - the kvetching, the cynicism, the cries of test bias, and (dare I say it) the ultimate capitalists, aka the test prep companies. Actually, the debate has already arrived, and it sounds remarkably similar to what we see in the US:

In March, hundreds of high school students staged hunger strikes to protest the dismantling of the old system, which had allowed many of them to begin university without taking entrance exams.

But there are also students relieved by the introduction of a new system. "Before, they would try to fail you so that you would have to pay," says 17-year-old Ilia Boss, a recent Tbilisi high school graduate. "Now you have a guarantee that you can get anywhere and study if you have knowledge."

Hunger strikes? Hard to imagine a US teen doing that (or paying a bribe, which is supposedly common). Armed guards will accompany the test forms before and after administrations, which suggests that the stakes are a tad higher in post-Soviet Georgia than here.

(Translation of "Number 2 Pencil" in the title courtesy of this site.)

(Update: "Russian" terms changed to "Georgian.")

Are the PATs too easy?

A testing opponent from the Far North battles on:

A long-time opponent of standardized achievement tests recently took his fight to the highest rung of Alberta’s education system, but Wayne Hampton isn’t hopeful that change is forthcoming. Hampton, principal of Lacombe Upper Elementary School, met with Education minister Gene Zwozdesky and several aides in Edmonton on April 15, to discuss the merits of Alberta’s Provincial Achievement Testing program (PATs)--a series of standardized multiple-choice tests given to students in grades 3, 6 and 9. A decision to expand the testing program to Grade 4 remains undecided.

"It’s been a very tough battle," said Hampton, who has long opposed PATs, believing they "stifle creativity and measure what’s easy rather than what’s important." He presented similar views to the Alberta Commission on Learning in 2002 and to numerous educational conferences and gatherings with parents.

"Some believe that assessment is a whole lot more than giving a kid a multiple-choice test," he said.

I agree that assessment can, and probably should, be more than that. And while I don't believe that multiple-choice exams by definition stifle creativity, I give Hampton credit for opposing the test on the grounds that the items are too easy, and not because (as we often see here) some bogus claims that certain types of students cannot possibly understand them.

Here's the website for the PATs . I took a look at the Grade 6 Math items. There are only 80 multiple-choice items, and for 50 of them, examinees can use calculators. The blueprint does not look very difficult at all (though kudos to them for introducing stats at this level).

I have to admit, this part makes me a tad suspicious:

Students who meet the acceptable standard have a positive attitude about mathematics and a sense of personal competence in using mathematics in their daily lives. They demonstrate confidence when using common mathematical procedures and when applying problem-solving strategies in familiar settings.

Is the implication here that students who are at a certain level can be assumed to think positively about math? Or is the deal that (oh, no) getting students to be "positive" about math is a goal of the exam, and is directly measured in some way on the test? Seeing phrases like "positive attitudes" and "confidence" snuck into the actual standards makes me think there's some fluffy "self-esteem" aspect being considered here, with the student's feelings about math being considered as important as their skills.

Hampton may be on to something.

Different country, same landscape

In the three years and change that N2P has been operational, I've come across quite a few stories about American "educators" who care less about imparting knowledge and skills than about making sure their charges come parroting the "correct" political statements. Rarely, though, will those "educators" openly admit to caring more about ideology than about the specifics of their chosen field (this holds more for the K12 environment than in college). It's obvious to the careful observer (and sometimes the not-so-careful), but most classroom activists pay lip service to the more traditional ideals of education.

But in Australia, the president of the NSW English Teachers Association has no qualms about stating that teaching English is not the most important task for those in his field:

In the US it's known as the culture wars; the battle between a liberal-humanist view of education based on the disinterested pursuit of truth and those committed to overthrowing the status quo and turning students into politically correct new age warriors.

We knew the truth about Iraq before the election. Did our former students just not care?...Has English failed not only to create critical generations, but also failed to create humane ones?"

Hear that, Devoted Australian Readers (should I happen to have any)? Sawyer deigns to forgive you for your unsophisticated assumption that your child's ability to think and question critically is what matters, as opposed to the conclusions they reach. By God, they did not vote the right way in the past election, so they obviously aren't properly using their critical thinking skills! How could any parent feel proud to have a literate child, well-schooled in classic literature, if the result is - horrors! - another Howard term?

And won't Australian parents be happy to hear that an educator has openly stated that he thinks it's the job of the schools to make children "humane"?

(Via Tim Blair.)

And whatever you do, don't refer to the teacher's "fanny"

When visiting England, American tourists should remember that a gallon of water is 160 ounces, not 128; the hood of a car is the roof, not the front cover of the engine; and a 17% correct response on an exam is a B, not an F:

Pupils have been awarded a B grade in a maths GCSE exam despite scoring only 17 per cent, The Telegraph can reveal. The pass marks for the new exam, which was taken last summer by 7,500 children from 65 schools and is due to be introduced nationwide next year, were an all-time low.

The new exam has been designed to replace the "three-tier" GCSE, where teenagers sit a higher, intermediate or foundation paper depending on their ability. Pupils taking the lowest paper cannot achieve the all-important grade C. Candidates will instead take a "two-tier" GCSE. The more difficult paper allows pupils to get A* to B grades, while a less difficult one covers grades C and D.

If the difficulties of the papers differ by that much, then yes, it's possible that a 17% on the higher-level paper really is B work. Not something that looks good to the public - especially if the observation is that those who get those B's and A's really aren't capable of doing that well later on - but it is possible. However, it doesn't seem very useful to have an exam in which even the A scorers get half the questions wrong, because all those additional items go to waste. It would make far more sense to assemble the exam to have many more of the B level items, which would both raise the percent-passing level for a B (thus satisfying the public) and better discriminate among B and A level students. There can still be a few impossible items on there to sort out the A from the A* kids, but there don't need to be many of such items, if they're well-chosen.

(Hat tip to Captain's Quarter's for the link.)

Update: Tall, Dark, & Mysterious has much more on the topic of grade inflation (especially in Canada, where she's based). Well worth your time to go read it all.

Rolling the die and hoping for better math skills

Hot on the heels of our discussion about the importance of boring old "rote" math skills comes this depressing report about US math performance compared to other countries:

For a nation committed to preparing students for 21st century jobs, the results of the first-of-its-kind study of how well teenagers can apply math skills to real-life problems is sobering. American 15-year-olds rank well below those in most other industrialized countries in mathematics literacy and problem solving, according to a survey released Monday.

Although the notion that America faces a math gap is not new, Monday's results show with new clarity that the problem extends beyond the classrooms into the kind of life-skills that employers care about...

Given what we've heard here about the frightening attitudes in education about math, anyone want to bet that a lot of the problem is that the "life-skills" employers care about don't add up at all with the skills that educrats try to push?

The international survey was done by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2003, testing 15-year-olds.

In one question, students are asked to calculate the number of dots on the bottom face of six dice, given the rule that the total number of dots on two opposite faces is always seven. Only 63 percent of US students got it right, compared with 68 percent of their peers in OECD countries. (This question was ranked Level 2, out of three proficiency levels.)

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.

If at least two sides of the die are showing (probably three sides are, as exemplified in the diagram below), then the only skill this task requires is for the student to be able to add one-digit numbers. Excuse me - the student also needs to recognize that all they need to do is add one-digit numbers, and understand the spatial relationship among the six sides of a die.

(Note: The graphic is from a random die question I pulled off the web; this is not the graphic from the actual item. Just an example.)

And 37% of the participating American 15-year-olds couldn't figure that out? Jeez, I guess grandparents aren't playing enough Yahtzee or blackgammon with their grandkids these days.

These results track findings that most US high school students don't know enough mathematics to do well in college courses or the work force. "Only 40 percent of high school graduates are prepared to earn a C or higher in a college level course, and these are also the same skills needed for the workplace," says Ken Gullette, a spokesman for ACT Inc. in Iowa City, a college entrance exam.

Ken might want to talk about that with educators who believe children shouldn't be forced to learn math until they are absolutely "developmentally ready."

Update: Chris Correa notes that the director of the survey suggests that, in the US, there's too much focus on rote learning in mathematics, and that's why the US performance overall is suffering. Not only is that weird - it's very hard to imagine that our students are spending too much time on math drills - but Chris also presents an elegant graph to suggest that the conclusion is wrong, too.

And don't miss Jenny D's (formerly Dr. Cookie) discussion of the most important factor in math education. I don't think you'll be surprised at her conclusion.

Calling upon the god Neptune is not always helpful

Italian kids indulge in a little vandalism to get out of an exam:

Four Italian teenagers have confessed to flooding one of Milan's best known schools, causing an estimated 500,000 euros in damage, because they did not want to sit a Greek exam. The three girls and one boy, aged between 16 and 17, delivered a letter to the school's headmaster on Thursday, explaining how last weekend they blocked drains in a bathroom before they turned on washbasin taps and left them running.

The headmaster, Carlo Arrigo Pedretti, said the pupils wrote in the letter that they flooded the school to avoid having to sit their ancient Greek test on Monday morning. "I am stunned, I cannot believe it," Pedretti said. "These kids have no idea of the consequence of their actions."

I agree, but in a different way than Pedretti probably thinks. I mean, the Greek language has been around, in one form or another, for over 2100 years. It's not going to go away before the flooded school gets repaired. If those students ever get let back into the school, that evil exam will be sitting there, patiently waiting.

The Tasmanian Devil(ish system)

A Western Heart is all over the new grading system that's being implemented in Tasmania. Note to US teachers - if you think your jargon-laden paperwork requirements are bad, get a load of this:

The world is watching Tasmania's education reforms, says Education Minister Paula Wriedt. Dramatic changes to the state's educational system will start from next year. But teachers fear they are not ready for the transition, which will use vastly different assessment criteria from kindergarten to Year 10.

"This does require a big shift, it's quite groundbreaking," Ms Wriedt said yesterday. "I know some people are not comfortable with the change but equally there are many who are really excited about it...Students don't have to learn everything in the classroom as they always have."

Emphasis mine. What could that last line possibly mean?

From next year teachers will prepare report cards on how students do in whole new areas. Once phase-in is complete, report cards will not list traditional subjects like maths or english, with a grade for each.

A teacher who contacted The Mercury yesterday said many of her colleagues were sceptical and angry about the new system. She said it was over-theorised, jargonised and difficult for teachers, let alone parents, to understand. The secondary teacher said she would have to collaborate with every other teacher on her nearly 300 students.

Not to mention she'll need to have a firm grasp on the continuum underlying the construct of "social responsibility." Or at least what the Dept. of Ed considers socially responsible. Quite a change from focusing on teaching the ABC's.

I'm sure more teachers would be skeptical and angrey too - if they knew anything about the new system, that is:

...in a survey of 1334 teachers across the state by the Australian Education Union, 92 per cent said they did not have good knowledge of the marking system. More than half of primary teachers and three-quarters of secondary ones surveyed said they had little or no knowledge of the new system...

And you thought NCLB had a lot of resistance. This program is going to be implemented next year, and 75% of secondary teachers know very little about it?

From next year, government schools must assess four key areas - inquiry, numeracy, literacy and well-being. More will follow in 2006. They fall into five "essentials" - thinking, communicating (eg, literacy and numeracy), personal futures (ethics and well-being), social responsibility and world futures.

"Thinking"? How, exactly, does one measure "thinking" without focusing specifically on a subject area that a student is "thinking" about? Can a student be determined to be "thinking" well if no one checks to see if they got the right answer? Since when is numeracy part of "communication?" Does this mean that it doesn't matter how well you understand math, only how well you convey it to others? "Personal futures?" You've got be kidding me. How are teachers going to grade on that? Who's defining "well-being" here, especially when we're talking about teenagers? (Let me guess, goths wouldn't be defined as doing "well.")

"Social responsibility?" "World futures?" Those are weighted as heavily as "literacy and numeracy?" I'm highly suspicious of any "social responsibility" that is obviously divorced from civics and history learning; I doubt this method is intended to turn out patriotic and informed little Tasmanians.

The new learning replaces conventional division of subjects into mathematics, English or science - and nothing is compulsory. Instead, "cross-curricular units" will be studied by drawing on various disciplines. For example, learning about water could draw on maths, science and geography.

"Nothing is compulsory." That says it all. I guess being "socially responsible" doesn't extend to having enough of a backbone to insist that all children in Tasmanian schools learn some required amount of math, language, history, and science.

Oxford entrance exams

Entrance exams are back for Oxford University:

Oxford University is moving to reintroduce entrance tests for history and English in the latest assault on the credibility of the A-level system as a means of identifying bright pupils. The move comes just nine years after the university scrapped its entrance examinations amid concern that they favoured independent school pupils.

Though the university insists the new tests will measure aptitude and not knowledge, the change is certain to provoke renewed criticism that the system will once again favour those with a privileged education, hindering government-driven efforts to widen access to elite universities.

By "privileged education" the critics must mean "education that results in applicants being able to read college-level material:"

The new Oxford-only history test is expected to be sat by pupils in schools and colleges in November, allowing admissions tutors to whittle down applicant numbers before inviting candidates for interview. The university's English faculty is canvassing schools over a similar test in English, though this would not be introduced before the 2005 admissions round...

The university insists its proposed tests will be different from the old entrance exam, abolished in 1995, which offered candidates a long list of essay questions on a range of authors or historical periods. Instead, the tests are likely to present students with a text to analyse in order to assess whether they have the skills re quired for studying the subject.

In other words, reading comprehension skills in the area in which the student hopes to study. If only "privileged" students in the UK learn to do this, I feel sorry for the rest.

However, Oxford's decision to go it alone with bespoke history tests will underline fears that dissatisfaction with A-levels will lead to a proliferation of entrance exams required by top-level universities.

Prof Schwartz, whose report is due on April 5, warned in a speech last week against the sprouting of numerous separate exams which could prove unreliable, invalid, or put off poorer students if taking them involved travel to the university concerned.

Professor Schwartz' concern that universities might develop inadequate tests for admissions purposes is a valid one. However, I seriously doubt that's what's at the root of hostility towards testing in the UK. I suspect that, as in the US, testing critics are driven mainly by a dislike of objective standards.

When a standardized test isn't enough

Anyone who's ever labored under an unintelligible TA will appreciate this article from the Arizona Daily Wildcat (U of A):

Calculus and chemistry can be difficult to understand, and for some students, having an international teaching assistant can make it even harder...While it is a university requirement that all international graduate students pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language, each department on campus hires TAs through its own screening processes.

“Though it is the best test of this nature we have, as with any standardized test, the TOEFL is subjective,” she said.

A certain TOEFL score is required to get that student visa; thus, the TOEFL is very high-stakes, and very attractive to cheaters. In 2002, international students from 13 states were arrested on charges of fraudulent TOEFL behavior; they hired others to take the TOEFL for them, and risked deportation when caught.

One U of A lab supervisor requires additional speaking tests and presentation of international students, which I believe is absolutely necessary in addition to the other standardized assessments. Of course, part of the problem is the sheer volume of international students that must learn to speak English in a way that American students can follow:

Of the 50 general chemistry TAs, 40 percent are international students. Thirty-two percent of the general biology TAs and approximately 33 percent of the math TAs are also international students.

Last year, 24 percent of the approximately 7,400 graduate students at the UA were international students, according to the 2002-2003 UA Fact Book.

Leave No Aussie Behind

An interesting article about changes to come in Australian public schools:

A flying squad of talent-spotters will work through West Australian high schools identifying and helping students who have the potential to get to university, under a landmark plan announced yesterday. State Education Minister Alan Carpenter said the scheme, the first of its kind in Australia, was set up in response to recent criticism of the state schools.

What sort of recent criticism was that? Parents are apparently criticizing with their feet by beating a path away from public schools, which have been labeled too "values-neutral" and politically correct. Australian Prime Minister John Howard wants ranking of public schools by performance, and has singled out the teachers union in particular as a bad influence.

Is a NCLB-type act in Australia's future? And what's this talent-spotting squad supposed to do?

Six professionals, not necessarily from an education background, would be hired to tour schools, meeting teachers and students and providing services such as target-setting and coaching. Mr Carpenter said he believed many state high schools matched or bettered private schools in the quality of their teaching, but the increasing competition for university places had forced the Government to focus on academic results...

The minister indicated it was time to put high school students under greater pressure to succeed. "Nobody should fall for this idea we should let children go through at their own speed. What does that mean? Speed them up, increase their potential, raise their expectations. Don't settle for coasting. Not every child will want to go to university, but for those who do, I want to give them the best possible opportunity."

I found this comment amusing:

Australian Education Union national president Pat Byrne said she she agreed students could benefit from extra assistance, but questioned the value of help from outsiders. "I don't know what six people across the state can do that isn't already being done in the schools," she said.

Yes, but what's the harm in seeing what they do? Unless the goal is to avoid any sort of outside influence in public schools?

More on what Australian parents supposedly want, here.

"Iraqi parents love standardized testing"

The Wall Street Journal has an article online (free for seven days to non-subscribers) by education maven Bill Evers. Topic: Helping revive the Iraqi educational system.

...You're a senior adviser on education for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), recruited by the White House and the office of the secretary of defense and approved by Ambassador Paul Bremer. Your five-month mission is to help revive teaching and learning in a country on the mend from a fascist despotism. What's it like?

• It's gratifying. The Iraqi children and grown-ups smile, always say "Welcome" and wave. The teachers and administrators are friendly and dedicated to academic success...Iraqi parents love standardized testing and were fervently concerned not to let either the war in March and April, or the subsequent guerrilla skirmishes, interfere with the nationwide testing program.

Emphasis mine. Wow.

• It's not Afghanistan. I saw girls in school all over Iraq. In primary school, 45% of students are girls; in secondary school, 40%...Iraq has a tradition of valuing education and a reputation for having produced, in the pre-Saddam era, some of the best architects, doctors and engineers in the Arab Middle East...

We...tried to create conditions for normal schoolwork by children and teachers. When American or international agencies wanted to impose progressive education (learn-through-play) in Iraqi schools, we reminded representatives of these agencies that Iraqis had to decide what they wanted to be taught in the schools and how it would be taught...

Religion is taught in Iraqi schools as a subject now and was taught under Saddam. If you are a Muslim, you take classes in Islam. If you are a Christian, you are excused from taking Islamic classes. If there are enough Christians in a school, a Christian teacher teaches them classes in Christianity...

Obviously, education under Saddam leaned more towards indoctrination:

Under Saddam, propaganda was in all the textbooks, even those for physics and foreign- language instruction in English. The most egregious propaganda was in history and civics books. A history book published under Saddam would say, for example, that the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was merely an instance of the warlike nature of the Persians and their eternal hostility toward the Arabs...

...Iraqis themselves are now charting the future course of education in their country.

Yowza. Do they need psychometricians? I'm tempted to see if I can go! Rare are the opportunities for a psychometrician to make such a difference in the world.

Sharper than a serpent's tooth

Sometimes I revise and revise and revise my posts in the fear that perhaps I am being too unkind to those who make truly dumb statements. It's not a question of avoiding charges of libel; it's that I was reared not to use ugly names, and always to be polite to others, even when I disagree with them. Still, sometimes I feel I am too harsh when writing about those who assume that all tests are biased, that poor children deserve lower standards, or that schools should be designed around faddish educational ideologies instead of actual education.

But then I read Melanie Phillips' Diary and I don't feel I'm being too harsh at all.

For those of you unfamiliar with her, start here. She's a well-known and controversial British journalist and author. She also runs, on her Diary, a series called "Dunce's Corner." Consider her comments on this entry, in which she objects to the lack of foreign language education in British schools:

Our education system is simply disintegrating. The government's plan to drop foreign languages from the compulsory school curriculum at age 14 has already resulted in some 60% of comprehensive schools dropping compulsory language learning. Many bright children are dropping languages, but as ever the main casualties are the poor...

What a betrayal of children. What a condescending, philistine, vandalising government.

No matter how hard I've come down on people, I don't think I've ever used three derogatory adjectives at once. And check out this post on the "depressing vindication" of those, like Phillips, who complain about the dumbed-down nature of British education:

Depressing vindication for people like myself who have argued -- in the teeth of ridicule and outright denial from virtually the entire education establishment -- that education standards have dropped through the floor, that public examinations have been dumbed down and that the universities are having to spend much of their degree courses on remedial work. Lo and behold, now the Chief Inspector of Schools has confirmed that this is indeed all too true.

So now, multiple-choice exam questions are to be replaced by essays, to try to repair the catastophic situation where university students cannot any more sustain an argument...If one is trying to explain why our society now apears so gullible in the face of systematic lies and propaganda, it is because being taught to think has long been out of fashion in what we laughably call our education system.

And a professor of education really comes in for a beating when he seems to be "blaming the victim":

Typical nonsense from Ted Wragg, the education professor, who has been sufficiently moved by the Diane Abbott furore to inflict upon us yet more of his crackpot theories about education. As usual, he says the reason so many inner city schools are so dire is because their children are poor. 'If the fundamental problems of poverty are not addressed, educational initiatives alone will not achieve much', he says.

Pinning the blame for educational underachievement on poverty is tantamount to blaming the poor for their own failure...

Don't miss the comments on this last one. Phillip's Diary is relatively new, but I'll be checking in regularly for her Dunce's Corner segments.

Be All That you can be

Whatever else you might have to say about "military brats," you have to admit, they're doing great on standardized tests:

Students of the military’s educational system continue to outpace the U.S. national average on a standardized test that measures their basic skill levels in reading, math, science, social studies and languages. Defense department students, both overseas and in the States, scored better than their public school counterparts in all areas, at all grade levels, test results indicate... [Emphasis mine.]

“That means we have real good kids, real good teachers, and real good family support and that, in addition to some other things, is why we’ve been able to sustain scores above the national average,” said Janet Rope, the administrator for accountability, accreditation, research and evaluation at DODEA, headquartered in Arlington, Va.

In 37 of the 45 subtests, the military students’ scores were 10 to 20 points above the national average, five subtest scores were 21 to 25 points higher, and the remaining three subtest scores were seven to nine points higher, results indicate. Over the past five years, defense schools have streamlined curriculums. Tests like the TerraNova let teachers fine-tune what they teach. Last year, schools focused on reading, while this year, math was the targeted subject.

[deputy director for DDDSE Candace] Ransing added military parents are one of the big reasons for children’s successes. “We only have the kids for six hours of the day,” she said. “I think one of the unique things we have is that since we’re in a military community, it’s a close community. … We see parents consistently who care about how their kids do, and are in the schools [themselves].”

Military families have higher standards for education, and they want these schools to be as focused and efficient as possible. I figure the same left-wing ed school types who hate testing also hate the military (often using militia terms to describe the "old-fashioned" educational techniques that they they dislike), so these results probably won't get much attention in the NEA world.

The Monty Python School of Testing

Apparently Cambridge University admissions officers have broken free of the stultifying multiple-choice exams and predictable student essays of the type that are used in college admissions over here. Ananova has a sampling of the, er, "creative" questions that hopeful Cambridgians and Oxfordians must answer:

A new survey shows a Cambridge University admissions tutor asked a candidate if the moon is made of cheese...The survey of 1,000 Oxbridge candidates also shows would-be Oxford law students had to compare Timotei and Tesco own-brand shampoos.

A spokesman said: "It would just be to see how a student reacts to something they haven't been taught.

Well, yes, I suppose they haven't been taught that - but isn't Oxford interested in what the kids have been taught? And how does one figure out a scoring rubric for this type of item?

Fark.com has a link to pay-subscription-only article about these items. I can't access it, but Fark does note that:

Sample question for Cambridge University applicants: "Plants do not have brains because they cannot walk." Discuss. (Question 5)

Yeah, guess that involves "lateral" thinking. So much for learning trigonometry....

Both Jane Galt and Joanne Jacobs have more on the British system of higher education, which has been steadily lowering its standards so that more kids can attend college. Joanne quotes the following graf:

Where else in the world can students prepare for university without needing to study any of the following: maths, their native language and literature, natural sciences or a foreign language? Where else can students meet college entry requirements while shunning all the difficult subjects and opting instead for an ersatz combination such as media studies, sociology and sport?

With Britain's "pick and mix" curriculum, I suppose the Cambridge officials have to design admission tests to measure things that aren't taught, since there's no guarantee that Cambridge's applicants have any educational knowledge in common.

A force which united people (in misery)

Early riser Tim Blair (well, he lives in Australia, which means he automatically rises hours before me) pokes fun at a group of lefties who are upset about the negative portrayal of commumism on an Italian graduation exam:

The evils of communism appear front and center in one of the themes that hundreds of thousands of Italian high school seniors could choose to write about in graduation exams given this month. That topic invited students to ponder "terror and the political repression in the totalitarian systems" of the 20th century and gives brief descriptions of fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany and communism in the former Soviet Union and other countries.

Communism is blamed for the executions of about 100 million people, five times greater than the killings attributed in the exam to Nazism.

Yep, well, so far it's all...historically accurate, but politically incorrect. So, some teachers and left-wingers are upset, of course. One fellow taught his students that the "goal of communism was to unite" people, which isn't a problem unless he left out the inconvenient facts about the reality, which was that Stalin and Mao murdered tens of millions of their own citizens in the attempt to establish this "uniting" force.

Students avoided the question, it turns out, because they feared the biases of the item grader. If they'd had teachers who taught them that communism wasn't really all that bad, I don't blame them for shying away from a essay prompt that (correctly) identified both communism and fascism as totalitarian systems in the 20th century.