Reply #7: Really? [View All]

You want to post evaluations of teachers that are based on this?



"Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry
by Todd Farley
(Sausalito: PoliPoint Press, 2009)
Review by Jim Feast

Making the Grades by Todd Farley is a devastating look at the U.S. standardized testing industry that works on two levels. First, it shows that tests are scored in ways that are arbitrary and screwball, ending with results that are often (no, in most cases) doctored. Beyond this, it shows this travesty is unavoidable, given current economic conditions.

Let’s begin by noting why test results are skewed every which way, usually with little relation to a student’s actual achievement. Understand, Farley is not writing about students answering a question such as: In what year was Reagan first elected president? Those can be scored by a machine. He is discussing tests where students give written responses, ones that must be evaluated by fallible humans.

The first problem is that the questions and, more importantly, the rubrics, the set of written standards, such “good use of details” or “lacks details” that those scoring the test are supposed to use to grade responses), are written by experts who are blithely ignorant of students’ potential creativity and ingenuity. Take the problems that arise in grading these two “science” questions: What is your favorite food? How does it taste? The second one is even simplified in that the students are told to choose sweet, sour, salty or bitter. Fine. But, for pizza, for example, different students give the following answers to the second question: sweet, sour, salty or bitter. The graders, those who defend these responses to the supervisor, note (among other things) that pizza with pineapple is sweet, while ones with anchovies can be salty, and so on. Not only pizza is categorized with different tastes but so is ice cream – isn’t lemon sherbet sour? – as are multiple other foods.

But, let’s go further. What is food? What if a student says his favorite food is dirt? No, the supervisor tells the grader, that’s not right, because a food has to be nutritious. Then a grader brings up a different student, one who says her favorite food is … grass. Isn’t that nutritious? What about ice cubes. And so on."



The rest of the review gives a very good summary of the rest of the book.

http://www.evergreenreview.com/120/feast-todd-farley.html