Key differences emerge in Missouri House, Senate bills to create A-F school grades
#StandardizedTests
Are Missouri students growing? Growth model provides a different perspective
A 9-year-old girl stood before the school board and absolutely eviscerated standardized tests
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/9-year-old-mic-drop-on-standardized-tests-ex1
Everyone is #stressed and for good reason. For #educators this time of year adds additional stressors: mandatory #standardizedtests are upon us. Worse, it’s when the bad #budget news is shared. And it’s *always* bad. It appears my school lost #title1 despite our unchanged population. We again have to staff and schedule with a kind of creative genius those in #government would boggle at - behold as we squeeze blood from a stone! As #teachers hold it together with duct tape and #grit! #newmexico
I've given some thought to the meaning of death as it applies to those who have posted frequently on the internet. We often don't see people's writings in the order that they write them, and that means we can see new posts from them after they die.
Even without the internet this happens. I was in a bookstore recently and saw a book by Michael Crichton and asked the shopkeeper, "Isn't this his third posthumous book?" "Yeah..." he sheepishly responded. Someone is plainly raiding his basement for rejected works and works that were close enough to be completion that someone else can complete them and claim to have been co-author. His heirs are probably happy for the income.
Perhaps it's even possible for a prolific writer to write so much that you never really see them die because you just keep seeing new stuff. So in what sense are they dead? You were perhaps never going to meet them, and so in some sense—of observables—they're doing the same things that live people are doing.
The one thing they cannot do is the sane thing GenAI/LLMs cannot do: competently respond to a new situation, question, or idea. Oh, sure, it might be something someone speculated on before, so they can regurgitate that. Or it might be enough similar to a previous idea that the probabilities of guessing acceptably based on just assuming it really is an old idea or high enough that it escapes scrutiny that the idea was not really understood.
As I imagine (or perhaps just hope?) the makers of standardized tests like the SAT would tell you, there's more to competence than statistically guessing enough right answers to get a passing grade. The intent of such tests it's not to say that if you know these things, you know the topic. It is to assume you have a model that lets you answer on any possible thing, and then to poke at enough randomly chosen places that you hoped to detect the absence of a model.
But these so-called AI technologies do not have a model. They just hope they've read enough standardized test preparations or pirated actual tests that they can fake their way. And since a lot of the things that they're claiming competence in is stuff that people have already written about, they show promise.
Real people build a mental model that allows them to confront the future and these technologies do not. They built a model that hopes the future will be enough like today but they couldn't get by on bluffing. They are not growing. They are dead.
The nature of the game, just like my question about publication and death on the internet, is such that it takes a long time to recognize, unless just the right question is asked. And then, perhaps, the emperor will be seen clearly to have no clothes.
Which is also why a troubles me when I'm told that people are coming to understand how to incorporate ethics. Because ethics itself has to be growing all the time, constantly asking itself how might I not be ethical? It is something you do and are done with. It has models too. But it is easily buried under the sophistry of how things have already been done. The reason bias and stereotype and all that have survived as long as they have is that they have practical value to someone, perhaps many people, even as they trod on the due of others.
The sins of our culture are deeply woven, and easily rediscovered even if superficial patches are added to hide them. Our whole culture is a kind of rationalization engine for doing things in biased ways based on stereotype information, and AI is an engine ready to reinforce that, operating at such high speed that it's hard to see happening, and economically irresistible not to accept as good enough.
This kind of AI brings us face to face with stark questions about whether being smart is actually all that important, or whether faking it is good enough. And as long as you never put these things in situations where the difference matters, maybe the answer will be that smart in fact doesn't matter. But there will be times when it does, and I think we're teaching ourselves trust in the wrong technologies for those situations.
#AI #GenAI #LLM #LLMs #ethics #philosophy #knowledge #modeling #life #death #education #competence #StandardizedTests #testing #bias #stereotypes #prejudice
#MarinCounty only #SFBayArea county to show precipitous #PostCovid 10% drop in percentage of #HighSchool #graduates that'd qualify for admission to #California state #University system, although 60% avg remains higher than statewide avg of 52%.
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2024/06/12/one-bay-area-county-is-falling-behind-on-preparing-high-school-grads-for-public-university/?share=2ligrghofehciainteye #HigherEd #StandardizedTests #StudentAchievement #Edu #Standards #GiftLink #PaywallFree
A 9-year-old goes in on #standardizedtests and ends with the best #micdrop of all time
https://youtu.be/ogBuz4dU5Ew
https://www.upworthy.com/a-9-year-old-goes-in-on-standardized-tests-and-ends-with-the-best-mic-drop-of-all-time-rp3
#education #child #kid #school
New episode of 16:1 has dropped! Had fun with this conversation, though it deeply underscored how far we have to go to change the culture of accountability for learning outcomes in our #publicschools.
https://sixteentoone.com/2024/05/23/episode-109-standardized-tests/
In Episode 27, Jumelle talks about standardized tests and the studied inherent racial bias in the questions.
Subscribe, download and listen today! https://linktr.ee/bwabits
Manitoba government revises provincial exam system to better prepare students
The Manitoba government has revised its provincial exam system to better prepare students. This means it is pumping the breaks on some of its exams next year.
#globalnews #Education #ManitobaNDP #standardizedtests
https://globalnews.ca/news/10337376/manitoba-government-revises-provincial-exam-system/
Manitoba government revises provincial exam system to better prepare students
The Manitoba government has revised its provincial exam system to better prepare students. This means it is pumping the breaks on some of its exams next year.
#globalnews #Education #ManitobaNDP #standardizedtests
https://globalnews.ca/news/10337376/manitoba-government-revises-provincial-exam-system/
When k-12 teachers go on strike, I always have mixed thoughts.
When I read the demands of the teachers who strike I dually note them, and it all makes sense ( my spouse is an educator--- a sub-- and is treated very poorly on account of being Autistic), YET, the way strikers are going about it is poorly organized.
I think that bringing parents of students into the fight is IMPERATIVE.
The teachers are not the victims of the students. As exploited and manipulated as teachers are, it will never equate the oppression of youth.
Teachers won't be ultimately successful at striking, and winning those strikes, unless they bring their students, and students' families into that fight.
A teacher can't be arrested for repeatedly not showing up to work. A teacher won't lose custody of their family for not showing up to work. Parents do lose custody of children for repeat truancy. Students do have to show up to court for repeated truancy.
(This next part is especially toward educators)
NORMALIZE STUDENTS NOT SHOWING UP TO SCHOOL. NORMALIZE STUDENTS PROTESTING THAT SYSTEM.
Don't over explain and explain and explain how you're undervalued as an educator and then in a different post, talk about the problems of truancy and students "giving up".
It seems like you had no problem with being part of the school to prison pipeline as long as it benefitted you.
You all sound like you want increased pay and benefits for being the children's prison guards
Hypocrisy and double standards smell worse than fresh dogs' droppings on a hot summer day.
#Education #PublicSchool #Teachers #Covid #Strike #TeachersStrike #union #Students #HomeSchool #Disability #SubstituteTeacher #Autistic #Neurodivergent #Disabled #SchoolToPrisonPipeline #PrisonComplex #PrisonSystem #Prison #ForProfit #Michigan #LowIncome #Poverty #GOP #Politics #vote #truancy #LegalSystem #LongCOVID #LeweysDementia #Health #HealthCare #SNAP #Welfare #Edustaff #TempJobs #TempAgency #Economy #EducationIndustry #CommonCore #StandardizedTests #Test #college #HR #America #USA #Ohio #NTA
What's the point of #GRE requiring all that vocabulary for the reading part? What skill does it test? Because it just doesn't seem to promote balance between arts & sciences when most would just grind the words for #StandardizedTests ...
GRE的阅读题这些词汇量到底是图个啥呀？这算考我啥？考我能不能去为考试去硬记这些生僻词？难道这还真的能让大家做到文理平衡？？？
New Yorker: The Teachers Who Oppose Tests https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-teachers-who-oppose-tests #NewYorker #News/AnnalsofEducation #RacialDiscrimination #StandardizedTests #Education #Teachers
If colleges are serious about increasing diversity after the SCOTUS ruling, they could just ask a few questions about SCOTUS rulings on standardized tests. Culturally-biased tests don’t have to just benefit white kids. They could have sections on Reagan and the Chinese Exclusion Act and diversity would triple.
#AmericanHistory #SCOTUS #StandardizedTests
Especially chilling point buried in this article: "In history, it’s possible that reduced reading comprehension played some role in student performance." #StandardizedTests #K12 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/us/us-history-test-scores.html
My annual message for school children re: standardized state testing. #Education #StandardizedTests
https://grumpyoldteacher.com/2023/04/30/you-are-not-a-test-score/
#racism #collegeadissions #SATs #standardizedtests #eugenics
This long form article is worth the read. Hard to find a single emblematic quote but Here:
“Each SAT question chosen must parallel the outcomes of the test overall,” “So, if high-scoring test-takers — who are more likely to be White, male, &wealthy) — tend to answer the question correctly in pre-testing, it’s a worthy SAT question. Thus racially disparate scores drive question selection .”
#StandardizedTests are a metric for test-taking, which is a skill that can be taught (this is the premise of many successful businesses that self-label as learning centers or academies).
It's different from subject matter comprehension. or knowledge which is the main problem with using these tests in a primary or secondary academic setting.
#Texas uses them,jtoo.
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