Parents and teachers in New York are angry bout the state tests. There are protests and demonstrations taking place outside many schools. Last year, when the state gave the first Common Core tests, the scores plummeted. Only 31% of the students in grades 3-8 passed because the passing mark was set artificially high by State Commissioner John King, who sends how own children to a private Montessori school that does not take the Common Core tests.
Why the outrage?
Liz Phillips, principal of PS 321 in Brooklyn, explains in this article. She can’t describe the questions because she is under a gag order imposed by the state and test maker Pearson. Neither she nor the teachers understand why the tests lasted more than three hours.
Not allowed to discuss the content of the test, she writes:
“In general terms, the tests were confusing, developmentally inappropriate and not well aligned with the Common Core standards. The questions were focused on small details in the passages, rather than on overall comprehension, and many were ambiguous. Children as young as 8 were asked several questions that required rereading four different paragraphs and then deciding which one of those paragraphs best connected to a fifth paragraph. There was a strong emphasis on questions addressing the structure rather than the meaning of the texts. There was also a striking lack of passages with an urban setting. And the tests were too long; none of us can figure out why we need to test for three days to determine how well a child reads and writes.”
Teachers, principals, and schools will be evaluated based on these flawed tests.
Next year, New York will very likely use the PARCC tests, the federally funded tests given online. What a bonanza for the tech industry!
There ought to be a law: every member of the New York Board of Regents, the Governor, and every legislator should take the eighth grade tests and publish their scores. If they don’t pass, they resign.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Teachers and administrators at my school have spoken out against the overemphasis on testing for years, but our stance is not one of “sour grapes.” Last year we were one of the 25 top-scoring schools in New York State. ”
It’s a wonderful piece but as a parent (not a teacher) this makes me sad.
She feels she has to offer a preemptive defense of what she (correctly!) believes will be an attempt to discredit her based on her having some malicious or “self-interested” ulterior motive.
That sucks. It’s a huge red flag that people “on the ground” have been drowned out, shut down and shut out. It’s a real measure of how unfairly and narrowly this whole “debate” has been conducted.
I want to hear from people who do this work, and I bet other parents do too. I do not want to hear anymore from politicians and promoters of this test. They had their say. Now it’s time to hear from the people doing the work; principals, teachers and students.
If it doesn’t work for them it doesn’t work.
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The Tests of Reading and Writing That Aren’t
In writing classes, a process we might follow for a given writing assignment might look like this: we have our students do planning and/or research; come up with a topic; do more planning and/or research; refine the topic; do more planning and/or research; make a rough outline; create a draft, perhaps revising that outline several times in the process; share it for comment; do substantive revision; share it again; rinse and repeat as many times as is necessary; proofread; prepare a clean, final copy; and publish the work; get feedback; revise and proofread again; make another clean copy; resubmit.
Understanding the importance of intrinsic motivation, we try to ensure that the student is researching and writing about something he or she has some investment in.
Understanding that writing is done for an audience, for a purpose, we try to create contexts for the writing–real situations with a real purpose and real readers.
All this takes some time. And in the end, we have something worthy of attention as an indication of the student’s strengths and weaknesses.
If we’re good writing teachers, we let them keep at that piece until it’s fantastic.
One of the most important things that we teach about writing is something Ray Bradbury said long ago, that he had the best job in the world, because he could make as many mistakes as he wanted, because he could fix them and fix them and fix them until he got it right. I tell students that when Dylan Thomas died and his editor went looking for his last poem so he could put it in a volume of collected works, he found the poem in 69 separate drafts.
ALMOST NONE OF THIS HAPPENS ON THE STANDARDIZED TEST OF WRITING.
Whatever it is that happens on a standardized test of writing has almost nothing to do with writing as we understand it, as we should be teaching it. It’s not remotely related to the real writing that we do in school or to any real writing that anyone does in real life.
So, the writing tests are entirely invalid as tests of, duh, writing.
It gets worse. Because of the pressure for kids to do well on these tests, some of us stop teaching writing altogether and start teaching test writing. We teach the formula for creating the InstaWriting-to-the-Rubric-for-the-Test. Often, our building administrators, district administrators, and state departments of education get involved to put us through “trainings” to ensure that our students are mastering this InstaWriting. Of course they do. They will be evaluated on how those students do not as writers but as InstaWriters.
And then the students who are really successful at that, at learning how to do that InstaWriting get to college, and they are given an assignment by a professor, and they write one of those GAWDAWFUL FORMULAIC 5-paragraph themes, and the professor gives it a D and says, “These schools aren’t teaching kids how to write.”
And the professor is correct because InstaWriting of the kind done for tests resembles no real writing in the real world. It doesn’t even resemble the kinds of writing that people do for school, except, of course, in their InstaWriting test prep sessions.
I’ll spare you the same sort of analysis for Reading. You already know what I’m going to tell you. For the test, students need to learn to do a kind of InstaLiteratureReading and InstaNonficitonTextReading, again of a kind that does not even remotely resemble what people do when they, uh, read.
And so the reading tests are completely invalid as tests of reading.
And none of the people pushing these tests on our students and parents and teachers and administrators have a CLUE that this is so.
Of course, nothing I have said here will be news to anyone who actually knows the first thing about teaching writing or reading.
And on top of all this: well, if I went into all the other problems with these tests, we would be here for a very, very long time.
Basically, they serve one purpose: they generate profits for testing companies.
And jobs for educrats who administer the testing machine.
And they kill real teaching of real writing and reading.
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These tests distort teaching and learning beyond all recognition.
The have an effect precisely opposite that which is intended.
They are extraordinarily abusive of kids.
And they kill the joy in learning.
And in doing that, they violate our prime directive as teachers: to nurture intrinsic motivation to learn, to explore, to discover, and to create.
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Forgive the infelicities in the post above–the missing commas required before “and” and after “about” in paragraph two, for example. Quiz: why are those commas needed? The answer is interesting.
Or mark them down on my evaluation form. That Bob Shepherd. Less than perfect as a writer. Remediation is in order!
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Robert, thank you for this explanation.
I have often wondered what happened to the writing process we learned and taught. As a librarian, I was only able to go through the entire process a few times with my elementary students with the help of the classroom teacher and parent volunteers. The teachers thought it as an incredible experience (a report on birds for second graders). I worked with the entire class, then one on one with each child. I also did the same thing several times working with the ELA teacher in summer school with high school seniors who needed to write a term paper to graduate. I walked them through the process, truly guiding them. Without me, they would have failed again. I hope that the experience helped them when they went to college.
That’s what we need to do with the inner city students. Demonstrate and guide, walk them through the process.
I don’t see these Pearson tests doing anything to assist the learner, whether in reading or writing. As you eluded – the children are being taught and rewarded for “twitter” style essays – five paragraphs and you’re done. College ready? Research ready? And the reading assignments are irrelevant and boring with questions which don’t even meet the stated purpose.
I often wondered why the reading passages were so dry – even back in the day when I took the exams. I suppose it is to put the kids an equal footing, by providing boring topics and forcing all to focus on a selection which nobody wants to read.
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What we are losing here, Ellen, in this whole approach is WHY we read. We need to be creating readers. We do that by having them read and think about and discuss fascinating material.
Not by having them read a passage and check off the box showing which method of expository development was used in paragraph 12.
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I so agree Robert. The best way to learn is to read widely and freely. That’s why I became a librarian – I love books and I wanted to share this love of reading with others. Reading and analyzing a passage three times, even if it is an interesting article (which it never is), is boring and redundant. Read, enjoy and share, read something else, enjoy and share. Repeat ad infinitum. (And if you don’t see my name on this blog, it’s probably because I’m reading a new book).
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The people who support giving these standardized summative tests, by definition, are clueless about teaching and learning. That they support them is sufficient to make the judgment call: This person is cretinous and dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a school or an education policy-making position.
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I think that there is a special place in hell, BTW, for EduPundits and EduConsultants who know what said, above, to be true, but who join the standardization pom pon squad because it pays so well, because of that great river of green running from the pockets of the plutocrats pushing these deforms.
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Before NCLB, BTW, there was something of a revolution happening in writing instruction in the United States. It was an exciting time. That’s a long and wonderful story, but it has a tragic ending.
Testing killed it.
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One of the exciting things that was happening was, of course, the writing process approach. Another was the workshop approach. Another was the invention of lots of new vehicles for student publication. Yet another, very, very important, was a lot of very creative work that was being done on teaching very specific techniques from the toolkits of sophisticated writers.
Almost all of that is now dead.
Now we teach InstaWriting.
For the test.
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And companies that say that they are in education business have caused that to happen.
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Amen! Good point. We agree…THE DEFORMERS SHOULD HAVE TO TAKE EVERY SINGLE TEST THEY MANDATE!
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I am not one who is overzealous about federal power, but this should be a federal law.
Every politiican, every educrat, every plutocrat, every InstaEduPundit, every education “journalist,” every consultant feeding at the deform trough–every one of these people who advocates for or participates in the imposition of these tests should be required, by law, to take them
and to publish his or her scores
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Agreed!
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Diane
The scoring of the written portion of the tests should be investigated. I would recommend you solicit feedback from some of the many ELA teachers that are, as we speek, completing the scoring of written passages. Inter-rater reliability issue I’ve heard about would render scores completely invalid if made public. Teachers are required to sign non-disclosure agreements regarding test items but I believe there is nothing to legally prevent them from describing the actual scoring protocol.
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Interestingly, PARCC just released practice tests, giving us a little more indication of just how they will be testing. From what I’ve seen on the Algebra II test (the only one which affects me directly as a teacher), I feel comfortable believing that a heavy majority of the legislature wouldn’t pass it. As I’ve mentioned before (and surely will again), it demands the level of knowledge and understanding needed to get a 5 on the AP Calculus exam. It is well beyond the typical Algebra II student (and heaven help the below-average one).
As a teacher, at least it helps to have a glimpse of the target. For those interesting, this link should get you to the many practice tests: http://practice.parcc.testnav.com/#
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Quick correction of typo in final sentence changing “interesting” to “interested”.
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What I’ve heard from many teachers is that the reading passages were challenging, but good, and perhaps a bit easier than last years.
But, the feedback on the questions has been universally negative. Too many questions with two obviously bad choices and two choices with very minor differences. Those differences relied on tricky word usage that sometimes even seemed to purposely confuse the issue so that understanding the question became more challenging than answering it.
Yes, understanding the question is a skill, but if the student gets the question wrong, and it was based on misunderstanding the wording of the question, we’re not finding out whether they know the underlying skill that the question was meant to assess. Many of the teachers could not agree on the correct answers for many questions.
I think higher standards are important, and most teachers that I speak with have been very encouraged by how their students are responding to more challenging material. But, it sure does seem like we need a lot of improvement in the assessments.
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“higher” standards
I hope you are not referring to the Common [sic] Core [sic]
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Bob,
I’m not in a position to judge them. Most of the educators (charter and district) I speak with like the standards themselves, and do consider them higher or harder (whatever that means). Many thought that our low SES kids would have a lot of trouble with the material, but are glad to have been wrong about that to a surprising degree.
Certainly, most of what I hear about the curriculum available is negative, and I’ve already shared what I’ve heard about the assessments.
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The curriculum was never explained. It is completely unlike anything that people have ever seen. I’ve seen it done extraordinarily well in Core Knowledge Schools. But this was dropped on people without any awareness on the part of the State Department what it was a complete sea change. It would require completely different approaches in the classroom, and there would be a huge learning curve. It’s a really exciting curriculum, but again, it will make no sense unless people learn how to use it. JPR, I posted a number of pieces dealing with particular issues in the standards. Have a look at those.
It sound, on the face of it, completely crazy: lowe-SES kids doing Mesopotamia in Grade 3? But this material has been used to astonishing success in Baltimore and elsewhere in very low-SES schools. But one has to know what one is doing with it.
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Makes sense, Bob, and I have been reading what you’ve posted. Like many things in education, the implementations always seem to fall short of the possibilities of the concepts.
I know that we did most of our materials (all internal) before the state ed stuff was available and based on other successful implementations.
My concern is that the opt out message may have a nuanced meaning for many educators, but doesn’t for politicians and many jumping on the bandwagon.
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excuse the typos. my computer is being balky
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again, jpr, it’s important to distinguish between the general guidelines connected to the standards (read substantive, complex texts; do extensive work within knowledge domains) and the bullet lists themselves. When people say that these are “higher” standards, they are referring to those general guidelines. The actual 1,600-item bullet list is indefensible, but publishers are writing curricula to THAT. Big mistake!!!!
And, of course, it’s a BIG mistake to have one invariant set for all. Kids differ. And a complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs those differences recognized, celebrated, and built upon so that kids can emerge confident to take on their extremely varied roles as adults.
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Pearson willfully violated one of the fundamental laws of test construction.
Do not confuse the test taker. If an item can be misconstrued – it will.
If many items cand be misconstrued, the test should be invalidated.
Invalidated for ALL – not just our students, but teachers (APPR/VAM) as well.
According to our grand and glorious governor (quid pro cuo[mo]) only students are absolved from test score consequences.
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Ironically, this results from the test makers having become more sophisticated in their construction of the tests. They want multiple-choice questions that cannot be answered based on clues in the answer choices, such as one of them being longer or more complex, and they want questions that require the kids to do “higher-order thinking.” In order to achieve the latter, all the test makers are requiring that the incorrect answers be “plausible.” But what does “plausible” mean? It means “apparently credible, reasonable.”
So, the student is confronted with four choices that seem credible.
And, surprise, surprise, the scores plummet.
All because these people haven’t figured out that multiple-choice and other such “objective-format” questions are TERRIBLE, in general, for any but low-level, factual recall.
What color was Huck’s shirt? Blue, Red, Yellow, Green
It’s mind-blowing that they haven’t figured that out. But here’s why: they think that their multiple-choice questions are genuinely testing higher-order thinking related to the new “standards” and that the high failure rates are not due to their having designed the tests poorly but due to failed students, teachers, and schools. That’s the deformer theory. Our students, teachers, and schools have all failed.
This couldn’t possibly be a failure on the part of the geniuses who designed the assessments.
Of course, even if these summative stanardized tests were more reasonably constructed, they would still be completely invalid as tests of real reading and writing. See my notes above.
All this is going to blow up in the deformers’ faces. People will figure this out. The whole model, invariant standards + summative testing, is wrong from the start.
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cx: What does “plausible” mean? It means “possibly correct, credible, reasonable.” It’s completely unsurprising that if you design a test so that all the incorrect answers are highly plausible, a large percentage of the test takers will fail.
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Any test where over half the student population fails is a poorly designed test.
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To get a 30 percent pass rate, they had to set their cut scores at around 60 percent, meaning that those who scored proficient only had to answer a little over half the questions correctly.
That’s how poorly designed the tests were. But it’s not just that the questions were difficult, though that is true. It’s that they were asking the wrong stuff in the wrong ways. Skills should be INCIDENTAL, not the focus. The whole notion of doing standardized testing of higher-order skills needs to be scrapped. It’s a flawed notion. Standardized tests are good for testing factual knowledge and for testing very low-level skill. Is the person at all literate? For testing higher-order thinking and conceptualization, they are simply the wrong tool for the job. They are like trying to measure synapses with a sledge hammer, wooden beams with a wet noodle.
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Ellen T Klock: IMHO, there is no way that the recent 31% pass rate in the NY tests was unexpected to those that paid for them. Why? Because it is SOP [Standard Operating Procedure] in the standardized testing biz to report to clients what the most probable results will look like for any specified eduproduct—and the psychometricians responsible for designing, producing, pre-testing and delivering such finished eduproducts are quite accomplished in accurately predicting if said eduproduct will meet the clients’ specifications.
In other words, no surprise, the psychometricians simply deliver what the clients have paid for. If the buyers want a pass/fail rate of x & y, that’s what they get. It’s as simple, and cynical, as that.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
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Exactly right, Krazy. The nasty little secret of this standardized testing is that one can design the test to get whatever results from it that one wants to get, and that can be done with great accuracy.
Whether that was done here, I do not know, for the sloppiness of these tests is breathtaking. They were so badly done that it even seems possible that they did not follow the most basic protocols for design and testing before the trials.
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Robert – you’re giving Pearson too much credit. Test design? How passé!
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Ellen, this is a classic example of too many cooks applying disconnected theory. These tests were thought through with a kind of intensity never done before for these state tests. The thinking that was done led to design policies intended to create a more accurate instrument for assessing higher-order skill. But what those policies actually reveal is something that was true all along but that no one saw because the previous tests were sloppier–the whole model–using these kinds of questions in assessments situations designed like this one–to test sophisticated (in the current parlance, higher-order) thinking is bonkers. There are reasons for that. It’s a long, complex story that few will have the patience to hear.
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All I have to say, Robert, is if these tests were truly designed, then Pearson needs new designers. I’ve read through many of the NCLB tests and I had a lot of issues with them. These new exams are even worse.
They are trying so hard to prove something, that they end up proving nothing at all.
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The websites for both of these testing consortia are self-parodying–extraordinarily convoluted and overblown, full of breathless hyperbole and, of course, EdSpeak gobbledygook. The tests are to be expected from the folks who created that drek.
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You’ve heard of planned obsolescence, well, in education, we have planned failure. The cut scores determine the passing rate which is predetermined by the tester. If you’re right, Robert, the fact that the students only need 60% to pass (and only 31% could manage to score above that low score) means, once again, this was a poor test.
And NYS has used the dangling carrot before. During NCLB the kids in Buffalo and throughout the state were improving their scores to a three, so the testers changed the cut score so that those same students were failing once again. In essence, four years ago a third grader who scored a three became a two in fourth grade and received a one in fifth grade. (True story – my grand daughter opted out this year – no sense in bothering with an “unpassable” exam). We had her tested and she is actually very bright, just not in school – another story.
KrazyTA, that is the reality.
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Compared to April 2013, this year’s Pearson test has drawn much more criticism for good reason. It was a drastically different style than 2013, according to some students I accidently overheard. They even mentioned that last years ELA seemed very similar to the old NCLB test, with a few minor changes.
The CCSS must be working in terms of higher order and critical thinking skills, because I heard these same students conclude that Pearson still had a lot of NCLB items in the pipeline and that the sudden switch to CCSS caught them a bit off guard. Not one to waste money on test items already paid for, Pearson clearly cobbled together a mix of some new CCSS and mostly old NCLB. Same observation with the 2013 math, said the kids. What a remarkable job these kids did of connecting the dots.
Now hold on to your calculators gang because the full Monty CCSS math tests are coming to in three short weeks. Can you just picture the celebration at Camp Philos that next Monday as the national thought leaders in education fist bump and high five the dismantling of our public schools.
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LOVE that line of publishing their scores & it would be great if they flunked & had to resign. Oh if only!
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My fifth grader took a “practice” Ohio science standardized test last week. They had one group of them take the practice test to see if the school can manage online testing with their (current ) equipment.
I asked him about it and he said “we were the guinea pigs” which was just so refreshing, someone just stating what must be an obvious truth if you’re the test-taker.
So why didn’t the adults involved in this test just say that? King and Duncan don’t have any idea how valuable or worthwhile these tests are. This is a huge, elaborate experiment.
I’m just so, so sick of this phony certainty and stern, sanctimonious lectures. Well-intentioned and smart people are wrong all the time. It happens. We don’t even have to go to motive to question what always sounds like a manipulative sales job.
Why don’t they stop talking and READ the questions teachers and principals are complaining about? Is there any possibility (however remote!) that they are just WRONG about some things?
For people who are always nattering on and on about intellectual exploration and the ability to make a mistake and then recover, they’re weirdly wedded to “staying the course”.
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Worth a watch 🙂
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/nemi1a/common-core-confusion
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Good idea. Let’s have the teachers tested the same way. Hell, everyone on this blog. I tried the Providence test. I didn’t pass. Imagine. I can’t go back to the factory because the factory is closed. Oh well, maybe I can get on disability and food stamps. Always wanted to live in an old trailer.
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And this new test is even worse. We would approach it from the wrong viewpoint, second guess the test creators, overthink the response, and our “correct” answers would be marked wrong.
Harlan, aren’t we a little old to discover how stupid we’ve been all along. Those foolish university degrees I received, with honors, while all this time I wasn’t even college ready.
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You are amusingly right there, Ellen T Klock. In fact I wasn’t really college ready, and only got about 10% out of it that was available to me there, but it was still enough to get me into grad school, and eventually out, and into a job. Since I got through it, my suspicion is that neither institution was really as selective as they were purported to be.
I hate to think what that says about the manifold millions who didn’t even qualify at my low level, and perhaps the millions who couldn’t qualify now.
Although I must say, that the people (fellow students) I’ve encountered at our local community college in math classes are really quite intelligent. They pass the classes, which I can testify, push me considerably.
That I couldn’t pass the Providence exam may not say anything about the exam, but may really say something about the actual intellectual level of the people who go into teaching. That’s not a popular view on this blog.
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Harlan, don’t sell yourself short. Getting through college and then graduate school, no matter what the setting, is a feat.
That is why the new assessments, in essence, do the opposite of their purpose. Instead of promoting college readiness, they are instilling discouragement into the minds of our children. If the super majority of our students are labeled subpar, then why even bother with college?
But the bigger issue is that these exams are looking more and more like IQ tests. All we are doing is testing intelligence using white supremacy as the model. And not everyone is (or wants to be) a genius.
There definitely aren’t many who would qualify, based on the current criteria, residing in Congress. And even less in the NYS legislature or on the Board of Regents.
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That’s a fascinating idea, that what we are looking at in the testing is compulsory IQ testing on a national scale. I don’t see the connection to white supremacy, however. Wouldn’t smart kids of any color be identified.
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Perhaps that’s not the right term, but white supremacy in the sense that the exam is slanted in the favor of children brought up in affluent homes whose parents are college educated. Culturally the exams are also geared (via topics and vocabulary) towards children from white families, though any background could fit this description. They definitely aren’t written with the inner city poor in mind.
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Hey, I have an idea. Arne Duncan, President Obama, Harry Reid and John Boehner take the test. Oh yes, Joe Beiden too. Everyone running for office. Even the Supreme Court justices.
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Most of the Supreme Court Justices are brilliant. Unfortunately, sometimes they use their power for evil instead of the good of the people. (Depending on your point of view).
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This is one of the matters that our otherwise breathtakingly wise founders overlooked. They didn’t imagine the idiots we would have in office. I think, for example, of a certain candidate for vice president of the United States who ran off at the mouth continually about how tax dollars were wasted on fruit fly research and how her senior running mate picked up that meme and ran with it himself.
These people were clueless that research on fruit flies is one of the primary means by which we have learned anything at all about genetics. That sort of research holds out the promise of helping us to cure and/or prevent the roughly 4,500 diseases known to have a major genetic component. And, of course, we are living in a time when we are on the cusp of controlling our own genetics and are creating new organisms via recombinant DNA. Those two abilities are going to me more transformative than was the discovery of fire or the invention of the wheel. People with blue skin and wings, anyone?
And yet we have people who think they have the knowledge to be president and vice president who don’t have the understanding of science that one would get from perusing a third grader’s copies of the Weekly Reader.
So, yes, if these $&&$*#&*#*&s want to subject all our kids to standardized testing, let them be the first to take the tests. Most, I am sure, would fail.
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Intelligence is not a sufficient condition for high office, but it’s a necessary one. Josef Gobbels had a PhD in Romantic literature from the University of Heidelburg. This didn’t make him a nice guy.
We need both in our leaders. We need them to be “nice guys,” and we need them to be, as my kids used to say, “wicked smart.”
We have neither.
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cx:Heidelberg
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I’d also like our leaders to be compassionate and well meaning. I’m afraid that politics blinds any of those with good intentions.
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So I was curious about other standardized tests and how they compare to the tests they expect 8-13 years olds to do. Why would an 8-year old need to sit for longer than 7 hours to see if they can read and do math which is longer than every test until you get to the NYS bar exam.
GRE:
The overall testing time for the computer-based GRE® revised General Test is about three hours and 45 minutes. There are six sections with a 10-minute break following the third section. https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/about/content/cbt/
SAT:
The SAT is made up of 10 sections:
A 25-minute essay
Six 25-minute sections (mathematics, critical reading and writing)
Two 20-minute sections (mathematics, critical reading and writing)
A 10-minute multiple-choice writing section
Total test time: 3 hours and 45 minutes
You’ll also get three short breaks during the testing, so don’t forget to bring a snack!
http://sat.collegeboard.org/about-tests/sat/faq
LSAT:
The test consists of five 35-minute sections of multiple-choice questions. Four of the five sections contribute to the test taker’s score. These sections include one reading comprehension section, one analytical reasoning section, and two logical reasoning sections. The unscored section, commonly referred to as the variable section, typically is used to pretest new test questions or to preequate new test forms. The placement of this section in the LSAT will vary. The score scale for the LSAT is 120 to 180. A 35-minute writing sample is administered at the end of the test. The writing sample is not scored by LSAC, but copies are sent to all law schools to which you apply.
http://www.lsac.org/jd/help/faqs-lsat
MCAT (Medical school)
Total seated time 5 hours and 10 minutes and total content time 4 hours and 5 minutes.
Click to access mcatessentials.pdf
NY Bar Exam:
Schedule for First Day of the Examination (Tuesday):
In the morning session, which begins at 9:00 A.M. and ends at 12:15 P.M., applicants must complete three essays and the 50 multiple choice questions in three hours and 15 minutes. Although applicants are free to use their time as they choose, the Board estimates an allocation of 40 minutes per essay and 1.5 minutes per multiple choice question.
In the afternoon session, which begins at 2:00 P.M. and ends at 5:00 P.M., applicants must complete the remaining two essay questions and the MPT in three hours. Again, although applicants are free to use their time as they choose, the National Conference of Bar Examiners developed the MPT with the intention that it be used as a 90-minute test. Therefore, the Board recommends that applicants allocate 90 minutes to the MPT and 45 minutes to each essay.
Schedule for Second Day of the Examination – MBE (Wednesday):
The second day of the examination is the Multistate Bar Examination. The Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) is a six-hour, two-hundred question multiple-choice examination covering contracts, torts, constitutional law, criminal law, evidence, and real property. The examination is divided into two periods of three hours each, one in the morning [9:30am to 12:30pm] and one in the afternoon [2:00pm to 5:00pm], with 100 questions in each period.
http://www.nybarexam.org/TheBar/TheBar.htm#descrip
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It’s hard for adults to focus on these exams for extended periods of time. That’s one reason they are considered so difficult, especially the bar exam. I’ve proctored lots of elementary students and I wonder if after the first half hour of boring reading passages, confusing or complicated questions and answers, or difficult to impossible math problems, they just shut down. I’ve seen young kids cry uncontrollably or even freak out during these assessments. No wonder some teachers are crying child abuse.
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The tests are abusive in many, many ways. To the kids and to their teachers.
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