NY Times article about lack of readiness for college

[doucy]

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IMO this seems to suppress critical thinking and abstract thinking skills that are so important to succeeding on a college level.

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You don't need to think critically or abstractly to succeed in college.

[MrMon]

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You're making a mistake assuming that standardized tests actually set a floor. I teach standardized testing for a living (maybe I'm part of the problem, but I do it for the monies), and can tell you without a doubt that most standardized tests can be beaten with almost no actual knowledge of the subject matter.

Standardized testing plus teach-to-the-test curricula create a lot of false positives, allowing ill-equipped students into programs they are not at all qualified to attend.

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You are correct. I am assuming they set a floor, when I really mean they should set a floor. And although you say that the tests can be beaten with little to no actually knowledge of the subject matter, what does it say when students can't even pass these beatable tests?

From what I've read, having too many students pass the tests, or having some slip by that aren't qualified is generally not a widespread problem. Those few who do slip by, with help from people like you, are quickly weeded out by other means. At least I hope those guys who beat the MCAT are.

[mwgr5]

Most people don't care about truly learning. The point of high school is to get into college and the point of college is to get a job. Anyway that gets your through college to the desired job is the way most take. This path often doesn't require in depth knowledge or reasoning. No everyone wants to learn in school, some just learn to play the game to get where they want.

[theben]

Greg,

Most HS in the USA are horrible. I'd wager to say that 90% or more HS in this country are lousy.

When I started at my university I was as indolent as can be, (50% attendance rate, may be highballing) yet I made 7 A's and 1 B+ my first year. Most people at my university came from low quality public schools, took less demanding schedules, and struggled.

Some of the many academic issues w/ schools these days:

-lack of quality teachers with a passion for teaching
-poor emphasis on math/science
-poor instruction on writing
-lack of challenging tests

Just take a look at most school's AP results. You'll have kids making A's in HS classes who struggle to get a 2 or 3 on an AP exam. Most high schools will take pride in having students merely pass AP exams, rather than actually doing well.

[catalyst]

I think the problem is much more widespread and deep-rooted than standardized tests.

[Misfire]

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I think the problem is much more widespread and deep-rooted than standardized tests.

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I agree. Reliance on and teaching to standardized tests is merely the symptom of a broken system.

[Wyman]

A few possibly relevant remarks:

1. When I was in college, I helped an AP calc class in a local high school. The teacher had problems solving some of the AP test problems (which, IMO, were straightforward). There's no way we can expect students to perform better than mediocre when some teachers are barely better than mediocre.

2. I had initially tried to help a different high school. The principal told me that the school had 6 students taking the exam. He was hoping to get one of them to score a 3. When I said that I expected that (with proper training) at least 1 of 6 would score a 5, and that at least 4/6 would pass (with a 3 or better), he told me that I was crazy and had horribly unrealistic expectations, that students at his school just don't do well on those exams. No one from that school ever called me or returned my calls to set up meeting times (which amounted to free tutoring).

3. I think that it is reasonable to use standardized test scores as a judge of a school. That being said, in mediocre to bad schools, this is horrible for better students. Many more resources are now devoted to the struggling students (because the school needs more students to pass the test for funding reasons). This completely screws good students who might be great students with a little extra attention. I think there's a ton of unrealized potential. (2) above is an example of this, though admittedly there was more going on at (2). In addition, it takes away a lot of freedom for teachers to be creative. I can recall many teachers that got through to me in different ways. Now things seem more cookie-cutter. Yes, you can still teach cookie-cutter material in interesting ways. Lots of people don't.

4. As far as problem-solving skills go, I see students' problem solving skills come out the most on the T/F sections on tests (I teach calculus at a university level). I've recently been asking students and friends if they did logic puzzles as kids. Almost without fail, those who had done them had developed better problem-solving/reasoning skills than those who hadn't. My students who had done them consistently scored better on T/F questions, and if they didn't score better on the exams as a whole, it was out of shear laziness. Given what I've seen, I think all kids should have to do logic puzzles in school. I also think that the logic/analysis sections of the GMAT and old GRE (before they replaced it for writing) would be a fantastic component of a test of college readiness. In fact, Sudoku would also be an excellent way to practice logic. Unfortunately, Sudoku is too hard for many students because it has numbers, numbers mean math, and math is too hard.

[catalyst]

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Almost without fail, those who had done them had developed better problem-solving/reasoning skills than those who hadn't. My students who had done them consistently scored better on T/F questions, and if they didn't score better on the exams as a whole, it was out of shear laziness. Given what I've seen, I think all kids should have to do logic puzzles in school.

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Do you think it's possible that the same kids who did logic puzzles as kids had/have a better natural ability at solving them - and therefore enjoyed doing them more than those who struggled with them?

I'm not trying to make an excuse for kids who didn't do this as kids, just curious as to your opinion if this might be causation/correlation.

[Wyman]

That's a great point, and I've often wondered about it. To a point, it's probably quite a bit of each, ie. they were good, so they enjoyed the puzzles more, so they did the puzzles more, so they got better at them, etc.

To some extent, I think people are born with certain analytical abilities. But, I also think that the abilities you have (everybody has some level...) can be honed in childhood. I think that forcing kids to think critically, apply logic, exclude possibilites, and draw conclusions (both negative and positive) is just as important as (and will likely serve them better in life than) learning about the Civil War, spelling, and the history of the universe. (Obviously, having some basic knowledge about all these things is a crucial part of being an educated adult in the US today, so I'm not saying we shouldn't be teaching kids about Gettysburg or to, two, and too.)

[Misfire]

I feel the worst about gifted students today. When I was in elementary school (in the 80s), we had the Academic Resource Center, which was a place whare twice a week they bussed a handful of us that scored in the top 2% on IQ tests. We did all kinds of logic puzzles, creative writing, basic computer programming (as early as 2nd grade) and research papers (first one was about 10 pages with cited sources was in 4th grade). My brother is 11 years younger than I am and was accepted to the same program, but by then the teachers were no longer required to be certified to teach gifted classes and the entire curriculum had been watered-down. It's really sad that all these schools will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to entertain kids with no cognitive abilities, but not work to develop those who are gifted and need more challenging/engaging material. As long as they can get enough [censored] to pass the state exam, who cares about the smart kids.