Amy Prime teaches second grade in Iowa. She wrote this post about a confusing question. The following question appeared on a test for her students. She posted it on her Facebook page to see how adults would answer it.
Here is the question:
Read and answer the following:
Animal Alley rescued Cloud and Clip. One night, a helper saw two baby animals. They were hungry. They were dirty. The helper fed them. She cleaned the animals. After a few weeks, the babies changed. They changed from skinny to chubby. A loving family adopted them.
What happened to Cloud and Clip?
A. A loving family adopted them.
B. Alley Animals rescued them.
C. They changed from skinny to chubby.
D. They were dirty and a helper cleaned them.
What do you think is the right answer? Read Amy’s post to find out.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The correct answer for students is, “Do you want fries with that?”
The correct answer for teachers is, “You’re fired.”
The correct answer for Pearson is, “Ka Ching!”
LikeLike
Yes, differentiated testing at its best.
LikeLike
The confusion caused by the Animal Alley question stems from a printing error, according to McGraw-Hill Reading Wonders, the publisher of materials where this question appears. In previous versions, the word “LAST” appeared after “happened” in the question, making it, “What happened LAST to Cloud and Clip?” The answer, of course, is A. McGraw-Hill intends to correct this printing error in subsequent editions.
The McGraw-Hill people posted this explanation in the comments section of the 12/5/2013 piece by second-grade teacher Amy Prime that Ms. Ravitch links to above. See the 12/13/2013 comment below her piece, with the red McGraw-Hill Education logo beside it.
LikeLike
To paraphrase Monty Python: “Blue, no, yellow, AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!”
Any one of those answers is plausible. It depends on whethere you look at the long term solution, adoption, or the short term solution, rescue.
LikeLike
Ridiculous, cruel, inane. Plus the trick, “Animal Alley” vs. “Alley Animals”. How delightful for a 2nd grader. Thanks for posting.
LikeLike
No surprise here. Just a simple test question designed to test the students ESP (extra sensory perception). Can the student read the mind of the test maker? If so the answer is sooo obvious. Did you get it correct? No? Then you should have been held back in 3rd grade ESP!
LikeLike
Funny that you should say that since a number of the other questions included on these particular tests begin with, “What was the author’s most likely reason for writing ——?”
Yep. They are expected to mind read.
I also enjoy the ones that ask kids to identify the words that are the “most opposite” of each other.
LikeLike
This goes right along with Joel Stein’s piece in TIME this week about rushing and being slack—the hasty implementation of CCSS and its accompanying assessments case in point. Like the fake Asian names cited as pilots who crashed a plane that a FOX news syndicate did not even check (and then did not notice how silly they were)..
Rushing is never good.
LikeLike
“Rushing is never good.”
Unless your agenda is to “disrupt” (an explicit tenet of so-called education reform) and destabilize.
LikeLike
I am curious how much each of these test items costs to produce (soup to nuts)? Do they even field test homework worksheets?
What a pointless waste of everyone’s time.
LikeLike
It’s one of those “main idea” questions, and not really that bad for the genre.
LikeLike
?!?!?!
LikeLike
What genre?
LikeLike
Da Coach coaches perhaps doesn’t teach??
LikeLike
Duane Swacker: I couldn’t resist.
For all the worshipful adherents of the High Holy Church of Testolatry and their Sacred Mantras of EduMetrics, I present the not-so-ancient case of the pineapple and the hare.
Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/04/20/daniel-pinkwater-on-pineapple-exam-nonsense-on-top-of-nonsense/
Link: http://www.pinkwater.com/the-story-behind-the-pineapple-and-the-hare/
Remember, high-stakes standardized tests and their somewhat-less-high-stakes cousins have been tweaked and fixed and purged of such absurdities.
Yep—brought up to speed, only if [remembering that radio hero of yesteryear, the Shadow] your mind has been clouded by a Rheeality Distortion Field.
Señor Swacker: you are not on a Quixotic Quest. It’s just that the rest of us are just starting to catch up to you.
😎
LikeLike
This sort of thing happens all the time. I have a standing bet that I can open ANY K-12 English language arts textbook to any instructional or practice spread and find at least three EGREGIOUS errors there and that I can pick up any state ELA test and find several questions in which the question stem is worded in such a way that a) none of the answers is correct, b) all of the answers are correct, or c) one of the answers that is meant to be incorrect is actually the correct one.
Finding egregious errors in published textbooks and tests is REALLY easy. It’s child’s play, really. One big grammar and composition program’s spelling chapter misspelled the word misspelled on the first page of its spelling chapter. One grammar and composition program spelled grammar with an e in HUGE type on the halftitle page introducing its grammar unit. I have a junior-high-school biology text on my bookshelves that says that “The blood returning to the heart is blue,” and not in reference to the coloring on a diagram. A VERY POPULAR literature program in the country switched, for a while, the definitions of “climax” and “crisis” in its middle-school text and badly garbled the definitions of other elements of a plot. ELA texts continue to say that a paragraph is a group of words with a topic sentence even though most paragraphs don’t have topic sentences. I have a high-school literature text that says that in typical Anglo-Saxon poetry, each line has four strong stresses that alliterate, which is totally wrong. The definitions of key terms in the critical thinking lessons in textbooks tend to be wildly wrong and no one seems to notice (e.g., “A deduction is an argument from the general to the specific” or “An inference is a conclusion based on specific observations). Many ELA textbooks define metaphor as “A comparison between two unlike things.” If that were true, then “Pears are tastier than lima beans are” would be a metaphor. The instruction and practice sections of the grammar sections of textbooks are FULL of grammatical errors, subject-verb agreement errors being the most common. Lindbergh was not the first man to fly across the Atlantic. Cinco de May is not Mexico’s national independence day. Columbus did not set out to prove that the earth is round. Gutenberg was the original inventor of neither the printing press nor of moveable type. Lincoln did not free the slaves. In the 1960s, more young people (people in their twenties) supported the Vietnam War than did people in their fifties. Napolean was of average height. Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned because the fiddle had not yet been invented. No witches were burned as a result of the Salem witch trials. The pyramids at Giza were probably built by paid workers, not by slaves. The Wright brothers did not make the first heavier-than-air flight. Most grammar that people know is not taught to them. Eating carrots will not improve your eyesight. Exposure to cold doesn’t cause colds. People do not use only 10 percent of their brains. There is no single Hindu religion. And yet one can find affirmations of these and other popular misconceptions in textbooks.
I have never read a popular book (a trade book) that did not contain a few typos, quite a few grammatical errors, and many, many deviations from standard rules for punctuation. I rarely read (or write) a blog entry that is free of all errors in grammar, usage, mechanics, and spelling (GUMS). I’ve edited books by some of the greatest scholars in the United States, and I can tell you that even they make lots and lots of errors in GUMS. Harriet Monroe, who edited Poetry magazine for years, once wrote that none of the big poets she published could spell worth a damn.
And so it’s always amusing to me that there are some people who act like they have discovered the philosopher’s stone when they find an error. Give me a scrap of that person’s writing, and let me go at it.
Books are made by people, and people make mistakes–lots and lots of them. A copy editor is interrupted after she has crossed out the word eventually in a question stem because the word is above grade level, and then when she goes back to her work, she starts with the next question. Oops.
So, finding these errors in published textbooks and tests is EASY. I have never seen a high-stakes test that I could not tear completely apart so that any reader of my critique would conclude, at the end, that the test was complete crap.
People are going to have a field day when the new tests (PARCC, SBAC) are rolled out nationwide. The test makers will probably try to protect themselves by keeping the test questions confidential, but the public won’t allow that. They will scream bloody murder and demand that they be shown the questions. And once those questions are available, they will be ripped to shreds by folks like me. People will be appalled at how badly constructed they are, and they will be angry, and they will have every right to be because the lousy tests are to be used for making high-stakes decisions. The errors in the high-stakes tests, as opposed to that typo on page x of novel y by famous author z, have important consequences.
All this is entirely predictable.
LikeLike
BTW
And so it’s always amusing to me that there are some people who act like they have discovered the philosopher’s stone when they find an error.
should be
And so it’s always amusing to me that there are some people who act AS IF they have discovered the philosopher’s stone when they find an error.
That is, such a correction has to be made if one is not using colloquial English. I read a lot of linguistics books, and linguists LOVE using colloquialisms to tweak the noses of prescriptivists.
LikeLike
Thanks for laying out in detail what I remember also from the halcyon 1970s….but worse now it seems. The reason it could be worse is easy to surmise.
LikeLike
“The test makers will probably try to protect themselves by keeping the test questions confidential, but the public won’t allow that.”
Not probably, definitely.
“. . . but the public won’t allow it.”
The public has not prevented Pearson from keeping its NY math and ELA tests in a virtual lockbox.
“And once those questions are available, they will be ripped to shreds by folks like me”
Don’t count on it. A small sample set, yes. The complete exams – wont matter how loud we scream, they’ll plead test security and eventually the clamoring will die down. They have way too much to lose if these tests are made public.
EOY, standardized tests should never try to measure a child’s ability of parsing convoluted syntax or reading the mind of the item reader, yet that is exactly what we saw here in NY.
LikeLike
The high-stakes tests, when they are rolled out, will be FULL of EGREGIOUS errors. This is entirely predictable. That doesn’t mean that those errors are OK. In tests being used to make high-stakes decisions (will this kid graduate? will this teacher be removed from the classroom?) those errors are not OK. However, the presence even of egregious errors in the tests are not the most important reasons why we should not be implementing the standards-and-testing deforms. Far from it. (concluding sentence fragment)
Here’s are a few important reasons why we shouldn’t be implementing the standards-and-testing deforms:
a. The standards on which they are based are badly conceived. The CCSS in ELA, in particular, seem to have been written by amateurs with no knowledge of the sciences of language acquisition and little familiarity with best practices in the various domains that they cover.
b. Having national standards creates economies of scale that educational materials monopolists can exploit, enabling them to crowd out smaller competitors.
c. Kids differ. Standards do not.
d. Standards are treated by publishers AS the curriculum and imply particular pedagogical approaches, and so they result in dramatic distortions of curricula and pedagogy.
e. Innovation comes from having competing standards, and creating one set of standards puts important innovation on hold.
f. Ten years of doing this stuff under NCLB hasn’t worked.
g. In a free society, no unelected group has the right to overrule every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer with regard to what the outcomes of educational processes should be.
h. High-stakes tests lead to teaching to the test–for example, to having kids do lots and lots of practice using the test formats–and all this test prep has opportunity costs; it crowds out important learning.
i. A complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs kids to be variously trained, not identically milled.
j. The folks who prepared these standards did their work heedlessly; they did not stop to question what a standard should look like in a particular domain but simply made unwarranted but extremely consequential decisions about that based on current practice in state tests.
k. The tests and test prep create enormous test anxiety and undermine the development of love of learning.
l. Real learning tends to be unique and unpredictable. It can’t be summarized in a bullet list.
m. We are living in times of enormous change; kids being born today are going to experience more change in their lifetimes than has occurred in all of human history up to this point, so they need to be intrinsically, not extrinsically, motivated to learn; high-stakes tests belong to the extrinsic punishment/reward school of educational theory.
n. If we create a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth, that is a first step on a VERY slippery slope.
o. The standards-and-testing regime usurps local teacher and administrator autonomy, and no one works well, at all well, under conditions of low autonomy.
LikeLike
cx: the presence . . . is not.
LikeLike
cx: Here are, not Here’s are. Sorry about the typos.
LikeLike
Robert writes: “i. A complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs kids to be variously trained, not identically milled.”
Frustrating to me is the idea that we don’t offer any alternatives for the students who are not meeting the standards. It seems to me that money, time, and energy spent on creating a standardized test should be matched with providing alternatives when students don’t meet the standards. The vocational schools in our district require entrance exams. If a 16 year old with a 3rd grade reading level is incapable of passing a standardized test for graduation, and can’t pass a vocational school entrance exam, what the heck is that child supposed to do?
It is fine to hold students to high standards for diploma, but what about the long term financial impact to our economy if viable alternatives for “non-performing” students are not explored?
We do need students to be variously trained. Why isn’t this part of the overall reform package? SMH
LikeLike
Good question.
LikeLike
Just a thought— the correct answer should be B. That was an established fact. The rest of the statements was a narrative that never really referred to Cloud and Clip. Joe
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2013 14:01:16 +0000 To: heefy@msn.com
LikeLike
B was a trick wrong answer. They switched the words so (although if the words hadn’t been switched it would have been correct, since the words were switched) it was wrong.
There was actually no correct answer. There was no way of knowing what happened to the two animals in question, since two other animals were referred to and the paragraph neglected to indicate that these were in fact the original 2 creatures rescued. Also, the last sentence could not reasonably be expected to refer back to the first sentence.
I’m so glad I’m not in second or third grade.
LikeLike
I guessed (A), and got it right. The last sentence was the only sentence that resembled a conclusion to me, and by that I mean that it felt like it had a sense of finality that other sentences did not have, and the question seems like it’s looking for the conclusion. But it also seems like the question wasn’t specific enough to be answerable.
I can see how this would be a helpful skill to learn, but at 2nd grade? How does a teacher teach this to a 2nd grader if the paragraph has no key words to look for?
LikeLike
Believe it or not, the skills of identifying main idea and details is introduced in first grade!
LikeLike
E. All of the above. So there!!!
LikeLike
Ummm…. Where in the passage does it say that “Cloud and Clip” are the same two animals the worker was referring to? From the passage, NO conclusion concerning “C&C” can be made. As has been stated, this is an exercise in trying to read the mind of the test maker. Kinda like a shell game, no?
Clearly, this question is wildly illogical (either inductive or deductive). The question discourages any child that has the sense to carefully read and think about the wording. And, so you see the future of American education. “Don’t reason, just follow the instructions! Rewards will be random.”
LikeLike
You’ll find similarly rotten questions on the sample Smarter Balanced Assessments posted on the California Dep’t. of Education site. Try the the 8th grade ELA assessment.
LikeLike
Pearson’s Scott Foresman Common Core Reading Street Series first grade end of unit tests are not any better.
LikeLike
My colleagues and I took the practice SBA test recently. We were struck by how more than half of the questions had no clear right answer (at least to us –perhaps we lack the reading skills that the test makers possess. If so, how are we going to teach our eighth graders skills we don’t ourselves possess?)
LikeLike
Pearson’s NY ELA tests were littered with subjective items in the MC format. The notion of three clearly incorrect distractors and one correct answer was flushed down the rabbit hole last April. Can’t wait to see the response on a nationwide basis to this nonsense.
LikeLike
Its almost as if they are trying to make these exams *test-prep-proof*
by infusing questions that defy logic or objective knowledge/understanding. This is not incompetence or accidental; we are about to witness an all out assault on the collective psyche of America’s school children.
LikeLike
Look out America. Common Core Pearson testing is coming soon – to a state near you!
LikeLike
The question doesn’t give specific information. It’s very demeaning because testmakers know the kids can’t answer it because all four options are exactly what happened in the story. They don’t give that as an option. Kids are being mocked as dumb. Teachers are being sacked for this stupid game. And reformers and like-minded state commissioners call this good education?? That well explains the pity with standardized testing.
LikeLike
One of the comments by King at the forum in Buffalo last night was that five teachers, looking for a job, were given an assessment question from the fourth grade test. Three out of the five gave an incorrect answer. His point was that they were ill prepared to teach, my deduction is the test question was invalid (like the question above).
What’s your conclusion?
LikeLike
Is King willing to take a shot at the grade 4 test? Would he bet his job on it?
LikeLike
I can in vision a new game show – Pass That Test! King can be the first contestant.
LikeLike
My 6 year old said ( a.) .. Alley Animal vs Animal Alley (which she caught on to) was no issue for her because it wasn’t the final thing that happened to the animals. It was only part of the sequence that led to adoption.
Really…I cry for you people.
LikeLike