This is a nice ideal to strive for, but until everyone goes through the same education system there will always be a need for some form of...standard testing across the board.
I think the closest we’d be able to get to this is maybe smaller, more granular standardized test that do a better job of testing multiple specific dimensions over an academic career vs a big bang at the end.
Somehow that actually sounds kind of creepy, but if that’s what you meant that’s the only way I see this done more effectively.
In your experience, what other ways or ideas have you heard?
"I think the closest we’d be able to get to this is maybe smaller, more granular standardized test that do a better job of testing multiple specific dimensions over an academic career vs a big bang at the end."
This is the heart of the concept, yes. We should be attempting to make in-classroom assessments as trustable as standardized tests which would allow them to continuously implemented during instruction. The quantity of data will provide a significantly more robust representation of a student's abilities today, and over time, compared to the infrequent snapshots of the ACT/SAT/etc.
> I think the closest we’d be able to get to this is maybe smaller, more granular standardized test that do a better job of testing multiple specific dimensions
Don’t we pretty much have this via AP tests and SAT II Subject tests?
> over an academic career vs a big bang at the end.
I hate to say this, but describing the SAT as a “big bang” strikes me as funny. It’s a test of fundamental literacy and fundamental numeracy for well-educated people. It’s not that hard.
The catch is that the preparation that yields high scores is developed over years.
For math, it’s taking the subjects and understanding the fundamentals of these subjects. Sadly, overall math education in the US is very weak and very skewed towards males. Note that most Asians (East and South) that have to take the SAT or GRE tend to and expect to get very high scores — it’s just that easy.
For the language sections, it boils down to having read and understood enough high quality “high brow” content. This high brow content covers most if not all of the vocab, reading comprehension, grammar, etc. that are needed for the test. Sadly, most young people are not exposed regularly to this type of content, and they rarely read it critically if they do have access.
I’m not sure what exactly we are trying to finesse with your suggested changes.
> I’m not sure what exactly we are trying to finesse with your suggested changes.
Maybe you should ask then instead of going on some dumb rant?
Maybe that was an attempt at a rhetorical question, but given how much you missed the mark, I took it more literally.
Big bang btw just refers to doing it all at the end all at once vs in smaller steps over time, it’s not to be taken literally. It doesn’t imply grandeur or anything like that.
Also, you missed the entire point of OPs message, as an educator, they were suggesting that perhaps the SAT doesn’t do all you suggested.
I don’t know what we’re trying to finesse either, can you explain what you mean by finesse?
> Also, you missed the entire point of OPs message, as an educator, they were suggesting that perhaps the SAT doesn’t do all you suggested.
Except that it does, and there is data to back it. As an example, some elite schools have stated that they really like using the SAT since it predicts success at their respective schools.
“On average, SAT scores added 15% more predictive power above high school grades alone when attempting to understand how students will perform in college. Within narrow high school GPAs, SAT scores further helped predict a student's future success in college.”
> I don’t know what we’re trying to finesse either, can you explain what you mean by finesse?
What do “granular tests” tell us that the SAT, SAT IIs, and AP tests do not already tell us?
The short answer is “not very much”.
The results of these tests are accurate enough to make meaningful predictions and decisions.
Note that there is some interesting work in learning portfolios (probably an optimal variation of “granular test”) that can be useful for structuring individual learning plans, but that sort of misses the point of broad-based standardized tests, which is normalizing widely varied experiences.
Note that standardized tests fail two types of people at the margins, but these are largely addressable, and the benefits outweigh the costs imho:
1. Folks who have test anxiety. Familiarization with the test reduces this substantially for most people affected by this.
2. High-performing folks (think top 5% or better) who don’t have high attention to detail on computer adaptive tests. Also addressed by test familiarity. I’ve seen folks who should be maxing a test get lower than the max because they were careless in some early questions.
I think the closest we’d be able to get to this is maybe smaller, more granular standardized test that do a better job of testing multiple specific dimensions over an academic career vs a big bang at the end.
Somehow that actually sounds kind of creepy, but if that’s what you meant that’s the only way I see this done more effectively.
In your experience, what other ways or ideas have you heard?