A friend of a friend of a friend passed this along, hoping I might be able to answer the question about the appropriateness of this test question in second grade.
What do you think?
“Please read a question on a quiz that my 7 year old son in the 2nd grade got wrong and tell me if I’m crazy for thinking that the testing and vocabulary have gone a bit nutso?”
Kings and queens COMMISSIONED Mozart to write symphonies for celebrations and ceremonies. What does COMMISSION mean?
A. to force someone to do work against his or her will
B. to divide a piece of music into different movements
C. to perform a long song accompanied by an orchestra
D. to pay someone to create artwork or a piece of music
Completely inappropriate question for a 2nd grader and the context is also quite inappropriate. Wrong on so many levels.
I wanted to add my 2 cents to this interesting discussion. I was proctoring a CTBS (California Test of Basic Skills) test over 25 years ago for a Kindergarten class. The school was on the Tohono O’odtham Indian Reservation in Southern Arizona. Since it was a Kindergarten class, I read the questions and the students circled the appropriate picture answer. I will never forget these two questions. These isolated desert dwellers were asked to ID a picture showing “skiing”. They were later asked to circle a picture of a cactus to ID the thing that was “prickly”. The cultural and geographic bias seemed obvious to me. This was back in the day when such tests were given once a year and tests like the CTBS went through a much longer development period. I agree with Diane about the Common Core Standards. They may be a good idea but they should be piloted. We have also strayed too far from the real purpose of tests, to assess students and adjust instruction. They are now used to attack teachers and teachers are naturally going to be defensive.
My second-grader defined “commission” without needing the multiple choice prompts this morning, but her school has a really strong music program. She credited her music teacher for having taught her the term–which was done in the context of an annual all-school field trip to a local Symphony Orchestra concert. (This is not district-wide; our PTA fundraising pays for the cost of the buses necessary to take all the kids. I don’t know of another public school in the district or in the area that has all of its kids at the concert every year; most take only one or two grades, if they participate at all.) Before they go to the concert, our music teacher gives the kids the elementary-school equivalent of a pre-concert lecture–which is to say, it takes place over a few weeks and isn’t a lecture, but they come away with much of the same information.
My daughter has also played violin since she was 4, and her public school has a fabulous strings program that she’s been in since kindergarten, also thanks to our fabulous and amazing music teacher (who, it might be noted, belongs to the union and runs the entire strings program during her free periods). Our school is also blessed with amazing parents, and several of them attend each and every orchestra rehearsal to help the kids tune their instruments and set up music and stands.
And in the spirit of full disclosure, my daughter has a musicologist for a mother.
Do I think most second-grade students could define this term? Probably not, especially with so many schools cutting music and arts programs. Unfortunately, putting terms like this on a test will likely have the effect of extending vocabulary lessons and cutting into time that would otherwise be used for music or art or P.E.
I teach seniors and have some who would not know this
unfortunately…