When you hear Jeb Bush or Ron DeSantis boast about the success of education in Florida, don’t believe it. Laugh out loud. Fourth grade reading scores are high, but could it be because low-scoring third graders are retained? Eighth grade reading scores are at the national average on NAEP—nothing to brag about. Florida’s SAT scores are embarrassingly low for a state that brags about test scores. Apparently those impressive reading scores in fourth grade ebb away as each year passes.
Scott Maxwell, opinion columnist for The Orlando Sentinel, called out the fraudsters by pointing to Florida’s pathetic SAT scores.
New rankings show Florida students are posting some of the lowest SAT scores in America.
We’re talking 46th place. Down another 17 points overall to 966, according to the combined reading and math scores shared by the College Board.
Florida trails other Southern states like South Carolina and Georgia. We trail states where more students take the test, like Illinois and Indiana.
We somehow now even slightly trail Washington, D.C. — a district long maligned as one of the supposedly worst in America, where all students take the test.
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This should be an all-hands-on-deck crisis. Yet what are Florida education officials obsessing over?
Pronouns. And censoring books.
While other states focus on algebra and reading comprehension, Florida’s top education officials are waging wars with teachers about what kind of pronouns they can use and defending policies that have led to books by Ernest Hemingway and Zora Neale Hurston being removed from library shelves. We are reaping what they sow.
But perhaps the most disturbing thing about Florida’s current crop of top education officials isn’t just the misguided policies they’re pushing, it’s the way they behave. Like it’s all a joke. Like Twitter trolls.
They’re calling names, mocking those trying to have serious conversations about education and generally reveling in owning the libs.
A few months ago, Orlando Sentinel education reporter Leslie Postal spent weeks trying to get public records about a newly hired state education employee. Postal just wanted to explain to taxpayers how their money was being spent. But state officials refused to answer questions.
So Postal wrote up the piece, and Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz shared the piece on Twitter (now X) with a two-word comment: “Cry more!”
For those of you who don’t speak troll, “Cry more” is a response used by some social-media users — usually those juvenile in age or intellect — to mock someone who is unhappy. The folks at Urban Dictionary, who revel in all things trolly, define “Cry More” as a “phrase used in online games when someone is getting owned, and they b*tch about it.”
The game in question here, mind you, was the Sentinel’s two-month quest to get answers about how the state was spending tax dollars. And the response from the state’s top education official was: “Cry more!” What a role model for students.
That’s just one example. Last week, after I wrote a column about rampant book-censorship in the state — with one district shelving 300 titles — State Board of Education Member Ryan Petty responded (at quarter ’til 1 in the morning): “Just dumb. This passes as journalism.” Followed by a clown emoji.
OK, for argument’s sake, let’s say I’m the dumbest clod to ever set foot in the Sunshine State. Petty still wouldn’t answer any of the direct questions posed in both the column and on Twitter. Specifically, if the goal isn’t widespread book-banning, why won’t his education department provide a definitive list of what books it believes students shouldn’t have access to in school?
Petty opted for emojis over answers, because that’s what trolls do.
The responses on Twitter to Diaz and Petty — both appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis — were about what you’d expect. One user told Petty: “My ninth grader could have crafted a more articulate response.” Several users responded similarly to Diaz’s “Cry More!” post, questioning his ability to maturely discuss policy and referring back to a Miami Herald investigation into student claims of “inappropriate behavior” by Diaz back when he was a teacher; claims Diaz said were bogus smears.
None of this did a thing to address this state’s education issues. Yet that’s where we are in Florida these days, mired in culture wars and trolling each other.
We also saw something similar last week when Diaz refused to directly answer questions from Orange County Public Schools about whether teachers were allowed to honor the requests of transgender students who wanted to be addressed with different pronouns — if the teachers wanted to and if those students also had their parents’ written permission. (Think about how bizarre it is that schools must even ask that question … in the so-called “parental rights” state.)
In his response to the district, Diaz offered a theatrical and condescending response that referred to “false” pronouns but which school officials concluded didn’t actually answer the question in a straightforward manner. Just more troll games … involving a population of teens more prone to self-harm and suicide, no less.
As far as the SAT goes, the test certainly has its share of legitimate critics. But it’s still one of the best apples-to-apples metrics we have for student learning.
Yet hardly any Florida media organizations even covered the October release of the new SAT scores that showed Florida’s poor showing. Why? Because we’ve been trained to follow the bouncing-ball, culture-war debate of the day.
So we see plenty of coverage about Florida supposedly ranking No. 1 in “educational freedom” by partisan political groups and scant addition to real education issues.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like hard numbers more than political posturing or magazine rankings. So do others who actually care about and study education.
Paul Cottle, a physics professor who authors a blog that focuses on STEM education, noted Florida’s increasingly cruddy SAT scores back in October when they were released — when everyone else was focused on the debate-of-the-day.
Cottle noted that Florida’s math scores for 4th graders were solid but that the SAT scores for graduating seniors were so bad, they suggested something was going awry for students before Florida schools sent them into the real world.
Cottle called the showing “a sad state of affairs.”
He’s right. Yet we’re getting precisely the educational environment and results that our culture-warring politicians are cultivating — an environment where trolls thrive, even if students don’t.
“As far as the SAT goes, the test certainly has its share of legitimate critics. But it’s still one of the best apples-to-apples metrics we have for student learning.”
Uh oh!
See below. I didn’t read the comments before commenting on the post.
I have always said that once we allow a discussion of test scores to prove education failure, we allow the nose of the testing camel into the tent. The SAT average in Florida does not even approach the harm done to education in that state by privatization. Only longitudinal studies will tell the tail.
I think we could have a smashing debate over whether the privateers and profit makers have caused more harm than the standards and testing malpractice regime.
The testing malpractice regime, to be sure. A lot of people (Bill Gates, for example) have no clue how insidious this is or how breathtakingly much damage it has done.
DeSantis and his cronies act as though they are above accountability and scrutiny. They tend to operate behind closed doors and thumb their noses at the sunshine laws. They are often arrogant and combative. Their agenda is based on propaganda that will support their authoritarian tendencies. In such a culture facts and accountability are an imposition.
In education they prefer to crow about their rigged facts like the 4th grade scores that reflect the state’s idiotic retention policy. Jeb Bush has been extolling the virtues of charter schools with claims of amazing successes based on the minuscule academic gains of charter schools in the Credo study. The public cannot get an accurate picture of education in Florida when so many poor and vulnerable students have been hustled into low performing charter and voucher schools. These young people are in education “no man’s land,” where billions of tax dollars are spent, and there is zero accountability. How many of them take the SAT? How are they doing after they graduate? Does anyone in the DeSantis administration care as long as their wealthy cronies benefit from monetizing the education of poor students?
Diane, DeSantis implemented a testing scenario that involves testing the students three times a year. They call it progress monitoring. I am now retired and am substitute teaching at Miami High Schools. Daily students are called out to test for either math or reading. Teachers are called out to proctor. Most of the instruction is done on Schoology due to everyday either students are not in class, or their teacher is not there. Quality interaction between students and teacher, students and other students is badly compromised. It is very clear the negative impact this has on public education’s quality in Florida…smh.
Exactly. DeSantis promised to get rid of the awful Common Core testing because his base (along with almost everyone else) hated it. (Not because it is useless and invalid and dumbed down curricula and pedagogy and stole time away from useful activities, all of which was true) Then Governor Parseltongue held a press conference to say that he was fulfilling his campaign promise and “eliminating” the testing. Instead, he was going to replace it with a great new system of “continuous monitoring.”
Well, what he did was replace a once-a-year criterion-referenced testing system with a FAR MORE INVASIVE three-times-a-year criterion-referenced testing system. Welcome to the new boondoggle worse than the old boondoggle.
I should have known that this was a fraud.
Are they using the NWEA test, which is 3x a year?
No. They are using something they are calling the FAST assessment. It’s indistinguishable from other Common Core Assessments. FDOE claims to have developed it. I don’t know who developed if for them. I would bet a fine Yixing teapot that FDOE didn’t
Exactly! The state will probably use the results of the invasive monitoring to continue to close schools and put poor students into separate and unequal schools so they artificially inflate scores through privatized attrition.
Attention, “Prospective” English and Math Teachers!!!!!! (We’ve got plenty more exclamation marks where those came from. And lots of gratuitous quotation marks.)
Are you a graduate of a fundamentalist college that handed out Bibles translated into 3rd-grade English and taught you that Cain and Abel rode around on dinosaurs like Fred and Barney Flintstone? Are you almost utterly braindead and know nothing of your subject and barely squeaked through even at your completely lame-ass “university”? Would you like to be completely scripted and micromanaged by morons so that you don’t have to think AT ALL in order to do your job? Do you want to stop the spread of CRT through the flowerbeds of America? The trampling of those beds by the Marxists of the Democratic States of Babylon?
Then Flor-uh-duh under Rhonda DeSatan and Manny Diaz is the place for YOU! Nothing but testing and test prep!!! Be told what to do 24/7. Never have to think again. Accept the yoke and fight the woke! Are you in?
This advertisement paid for by the Let’s Make Florida Even Stupider and More Insipid Committee of the state Republican Caucus.
“Accept the yoke and fight the woke!” Thanks for the laugh!
Good!
The SAT is a total waste of time, energies, monies, and student learning time.
Time to revisit the following:
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Wilson is an utter crackpot on the level of people who write letters to physicists containing their schematics for perpetual motion machines or to mathematicians containing the exact decimal value of pi.
You haven’t, self-admittedly, read nor understand what Wilson is saying. So your opinion means nothing.
I started reading Wilson. I got about a third of the way through. It was utter poppycock and a waste of my time. The guy was a kook.
Unfounded opinion, no thanks.
Which is a shame because the issue of error in educational measurement is so very important. It’s a shame to have distractions from the actual science of error in educational measurement, which is a large part of psychometrics.
Psychometrics is a crock of shit.
The same can be said of psychometrics that can be said of statistics. People often encounter statistics and statistical arguments that are false or fallacious. But that doesn’t mean that statistics itself is a bunch of lies. LOL. It’s not that statistics is bad. Bad statistics is bad. And the antidote is to learn some statistics.
No the same can’t be said for statistics. Statistics are mathematical concepts that have been mathematically shown to be valid (proven). Psychometrics on the other hand. . . .
I have noting against statistics. Psychometrics attempts to use statistical data in an attempt to validate their psychobabble. It’s not the statistics that are the problem, it’s the people using them.
I will admit that many of these sources of error in educational measurement are indeed sources of error. And it is really important to be familiar with them. Where Wilson goes off the rails is when he claims that one can never measure any intellectual attainment and when he makes the absurd analogy to standards for physical measurement (e.g., like physical standard meter bars that various governments used to own).
Wilson does not “go off the rails”. He points out the onto-epistemological errors and resulting invalidities to show how it is, indeed, impossible to “measure intellectual attainment.” It’s sad that you refuse to understand what he is telling us.
Duane, I have REPEATEDLY given you examples (dozens of them now) of completely valid testing of intellectual attainments. The idea that one cannot measure any intellectual attainment is just freaking nuts. It is SIMPLE to find out whether a child knows his or her times table from 0 x 0 to 12 x 12. REALLY EASY. With a degree of accuracy such as one does not commonly find in the world.
They might be considered valid by the test makers/givers but they are not and are fundamentally invalid. Yes, it really is that simple.
Counting correct answers as in your example is not “measuring intellectual attainment.” It is assessing, judging, evaluating but not measuring. And no. . . “to take measure of” does not have the same meaning as measuring. Two different, distinct concepts.
Duane, words have accepted meanings. Often those meanings are extensions of orginal, more concrete meanings. So, for example, Emerson gives the example in his “Language” essay of “right” meaning staying on a straight line (the right way) and “inspiration” meaning breathing in. The term measurement as used in psychometrics is quite clear and almost universally accepted. You and Wilson can choose to invent your own private language and decide that measurement doesn’t mean what it is accepted to mean (a synonym for assessment), but you will be talking to yourselves about nonsense.
“The term measurement as used in psychometrics is quite clear and almost universally accepted.”
What is that supposedly quite clear meaning?
Basically, like a religious faith believer, you’ve been so indoctrinated by the psychometricians throughout the span of your life that it is almost impossible for you to “de-cult” yourself from that thinking.
Once again, the issue of how attempted measurements of intellectual attainment go wrong is an extremely important one. That’s why there is an actual science, psychometrics, large portions of which deal with precisely this matter–sources of error in measurement. And because this is so important, it’s horrifying when people spread nonsense like that spouted by Wilson. Why? Because it makes folks who favor the invalid testing dismiss all critics of it as crazies like Wilson. They aren’t.
You haven’t read Wilson so I dismiss what you have to say about his writings/thoughts.
Duane, years ago, I picked up a copy of Worlds in Collision. I read about 70 pages or so and decided that the guy was a first-class kook and that it would be a waste of time to read further. Same with Wilson.
YGTLW!
Uh, no, Duane. I just happen to know some things about testing, ROFL.
And so do I. The difference being that I have not been indoctrinated into psychometrics as you have.
THE DIFFERENCE BEING THAT I HAVE ACTUALLY STUDIED TESTING AND HAVE WORKED IN THE INDUSTRY AT VERY HIGH LEVELS MAKING TESTS FOR DECADES.
I see, you are the ULTIMATE EXPERT, eh!
YGTLW!
Even his arguments that standardized tests are invalid make no sense. It’s gibberish all the way down.
Sorry Bob but you will never be able to convince Duane that there is an objective reality that can be measured in some instances. Lord knows how his students ever managed to learn Spanish, which is a language made of arbitrary rules!
In response to Allison.
Have you read Wilson’s work?
Be that question as it may, not sure why you see fit to question my teaching of Spanish or that I don’t understand that “objective” (whatever that may mean considering everyone understands every thing for themselves, i.e., our perceptions are subjective) reality can’t be measured. I’ve never said anything of the sort. Do you need help in reading comprehension? In other words piss off!
It is very possible that Allison has not read Wilson’s book because its major contention (that no educational measurement is possible) is prima facie utterly ludicrous.
Allison, if you haven’t, doing so might be worth a chuckle. The book is up there with other work by crackpots such as Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis: the Antediluvian World and Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods
No one said that testing was always easy or possible. That’s why there is an entire science, psychometrics, that deals with matters like the sources of error in our measurements and why educators need training in psychometrics and in the associated statistics. Given that such a science exists, it’s funny when people think they have invented it.
Of course there are problems with the state testing and with tests like the new Common Cored SAT. And testing often involves a kind of hubris. The fact is that a doctoral committee is assuming lordship over a domain of knowledge by choosing to confer or not confer the degree. You qualify. You do not. Don Gray at Indiana University tells how the great Shakespeare scholar George Lyman Kittridge, who didn’t have a doctorate, came to speak at Indiana University, and one of the English professors there suggested to Kittridge that he sit for the doctoral exams, which he would breeze through. Kittridge replied, “Which of YOU is going to examine ME?” LOL. Such was Kittridge’s learning that his meaning was quite clear.
Psychometrics is a pseudo-science, nothing more. In more mundane down to earth terms it is horse manure.
And just how much statistics and psychometrics have you studied, Duane?
More than enough to understand that psychometrics is pure bullshit.
“As far as the SAT goes, the test certainly has its share of legitimate critics. [count me as one] But it’s still one of the best apples-to-apples metrics we have for student learning.
If that’s the best comparison metrics. . . well I have some great white sand ocean front property over at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri-dirt cheap!
Actually any “metric” for student learning is invalid and harmful (see post above/below when it gets out of moderation). Who in educational hell was it that determined that students should be compared to one another?
So much so wrong with the standards and testing malpractice regime.
Who in educational hell was it that determined that students should be compared to one another?
The system of Chinese imperial examination was established to select candidates for the state bureaucracy. The origin of the civil service examination system, called the nine-rank system, can be traced to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E.). In 165 BC, Emperor Wen of Han introduced recruitment to the civil service through examinations.
So, answer to your question: Emperor Wen of Han
I wish someone had informed California Governor Gavin Newsom of such facts before he went on Fox News with Florida Governor Name Not Worth Remembering.
I am disappointed that this particular post seems to ENDORSE the SAT as a measure of classroom learning. It isn’t.
Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell, making clear that he knows little about education issues, even though he writes about them, said this:
“As far as the SAT goes, the test certainly has its share of legitimate critics. But it’s still one of the best apples-to-apples metrics we have for student learning.”
Yes indeed, the SAT has its fair share of “legitimate critics.” That’s because it’s a badly flawed test. And NO, the SAT is NOT one of the best metrics for gauging student learning.
The SAT is a test that is NOT tied to the high school curriculum. So it doesn’t measure “achievement.” It’s a test that has extremely limited predictive power.
Most research on the SAT finds that it’s a poor predictor of college success. For example, college enrollment consultants, specialists, and managers do a lot of research on admissions, and what they invariably find is that the SAT predicts between 3 and 14 percent of the variance in freshman year college grades. That’s it. One enrollment consultant says “I might as well measure their shoe size.”
The ACT and the SAT are not used to gauge student performance in college. They are used to enhance the ‘selectivity’ rankings of colleges, and they are used used for the purpose of “financial-aid leveraging.” Instead of using a $20,000 scholarship for one needy student, schools can break that amount into four $5,000 grants for wealthier students who score higher, who will pay the rest of the tuition ($15,000 a year) and who will bring the school more cash and “will improve the school’s profile and thus its desirability.”
As Matthew Quirk — yes, the same Matthew Quirk of The Night Agent fame — wrote in The Atlantic nearly two decades ago,
“The ACT and the College Board don’t just sell hundreds of thousands of student profiles to schools; they also offer software and consulting services that can be used to set crude wealth and test-score cutoffs, to target or eliminate students before they apply…That students are rejected on the basis of income is one of the most closely held secrets in admissions; enrollment managers say the practice is far more prevalent than most schools let on.”
See: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/11/the-best-class-money-can-buy/4307/
John Katzman, founder of the Princeton Review, which does a lot of SAT test prep, said this about the SAT:
“The SAT is a scam…It has never measured anything. And it continues to measure nothing. And the whole game is that everybody who does well on it, is so delighted by their good fortune that they don’t want to attack it. And they are the people in charge. Because of course, the way you get to be in charge is by having high test scores. So it’s this terrific kind of rolling scam that every so often, somebody sort of looks and says–well, you know, does it measure intelligence? No. Does it predict college grades? No. Does it tell you how much you learned in high school? No. Does it predict life happiness or life success in any measure? No. It’s measuring nothing. It is a test of very basic math and very basic reading skill. Nothing that a high school kid should be taking.”
Here’s author Nicholas Lemann –– whose book The Big Test is all about the SAT –– on the SAT’s severe limitations:
“The test has been, you know, fetishized. This whole culture and frenzy and mythology has been built around SATs. Tests, in general, SATs, in particular, and everybody seems to believe that it’s a measure of how smart you are or your innate worth or something. I mean, the level of obsession over these tests is way out of proportion to what they actually measure. And ETS, the maker of test, they don’t actively encourage the obsession, but they don’t actively discourage it either. Because they do sort of profit from it…every time somebody takes an SAT, it’s money to the ETS and the College Board…there is something definitely weird about the psychological importance these tests have in America versus what they actually measure. And indeed, what difference do they make? Because, there’s two thousand colleges in the United States, and 1,950 of them are pretty much unselective. So, the SAT is a ticket to [only] a few places.”
And that’s the point. The SAT is unhelpful educationally, it’s basically a fraud, but it very much IS socio-economically elitist.
Scott Maxwell has a lot to learn. Meanwhile, he’s fueling misinformation about the SAT.
The new Common Cored version of the SAT is particularly egregious, with its specific questions that supposedly validly test for breathtakingly broad skills (think, I ask you one question about the ingredients of madeleines to get an idea of your knowledge of France and French history and culture) and its questions with “plausible” incorrect answers, many of which are arguably correct because the questions are so poorly worded. Another brilliant job by David Coleman.
But I’m the one who is crazy in stating that standardized tests are invalid. Yep, I’m the crazy mofo!
The state tests are invalid and are so for reasons that have nothing to do with Wilson’s crazy theories. It’s really important that people understand the ACTUAL reasons why they are invalid. But if they encounter Wilson first, they are unfortunately likely to conclude that people who criticize the tests are just a bunch of crackpots like him. And that’s tragic.
You haven’t read and understood Wilson, so your opinion means nothing.
What’s actually wrong with the state tests in ELA:
Of course you feel the need to take credit for being The test slayer
This has nothing to do with anyone receiving credit. It has to do with the actual reasons why these state tests in ELA are invalid.
But yes, the state standardized tests in ELA are invalid. The math tests are somewhat invalid.
Well said, democracy!
“John Katzman, founder of the Princeton Review, which does a lot of SAT test prep, said this about the SAT:
“The SAT is a scam…It has never measured anything. And it continues to measure nothing.”
Not according to our resident psychometric expert Robert Shepard.