Professor worries TAKS test breeds ignorant voters

[tbyg52]

(Will also be posted in Election Reform News when all my articles finish loading.)

snip

That paper, "What the TAKS Test can Teach Us about Our Students," should be required reading for the Legislature's blue-ribbon panel that is studying whether Texas should revise its school accountability system with its heavy reliance on the controversial Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

anip

Although Jefferies' paper is a critique of the TAKS test, his research didn't start out as an attempt to assess the test. It began when he decided to use questions from the previous year's test (made available by the Texas Education Agency) at the beginning of a semester to see how much his students knew.

snip

So the next semester he gave students an open-ended test on the same subject matter before giving them the TAKS questions.

Only seven in 10 knew what the Miranda warning was. Only 35 percent could say why freedom of speech was important, and 30 percent understood that King George's abusive use of the military led to the constitutional provision making the president commander in chief.

As he looked closer at the TAKS questions, Jefferies saw that they were structured in such a way that the question suggested the answer.

More:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/5962608.html

My comment: It is extremely hard to write a good multiple choice questions. Apparently the TAKS people are not exactly at the expert level in this skill.

Example bad multiple choice test - if you use your test-taking skills, I bet you can make 100:

1. The fribbled breg will minter best with an

1. mors
2. ignu
3. derst
4. sortar

More (although not the original 10-question quiz we used in the Navy - haven't been able to find that yet):
http://tombrandt.net/blog/2007/08/08/franzipanics/#comment-320

Edited for traditional stupid typo.

[Lithos]

1. You are assuming

Example bad multiple choice test - if you use your test-taking skills, I bet you can make 100:

English skills haven't also decreased.

L-

[tbyg52]

2. True, but what the guy who wrote the article is saying

is that even though many of the students can't answer free-response questions on the topics, they do just fine with the multiple choice. There could be more than one reason, of course, but he points out some bad questions on the TAKS.

[mbperrin]

3. I'm quite sure that's what TAKS is SUPPOSED to do.

Been teaching high school for two decades and since TEAMS started the whole mess, SAT scores have declined, the ability to teach critical thinking has disappeared, and administrators want benchmark tests, practice tests, and more multiple choice tests to get ready for the ONLY thing that matters - TAKS.

I'm not exaggerating a whit, and in a rational universe, the designers of the test would be rounded up and shot on the spot.

But what do I know? I've only got a couple of degrees, a dozen teaching certifications, and two decades experience in the classroom. PHHHHHHHTTT!