Should parents legally pay for their ADULT children's tuitio

[ArmorPierce]

I would far rather rely on objective standardized tests than the 'professional' judgement of a single individual. All too often I've seen professional judgement being used to benefit certain individuals and to the detriment of certain individuals.

If they are behind, put them into a remedial class but still test them to ascertain progress.

But yes I do feel that standardized tests tests general knowledge/intelligence and reasoning skills, which I feel like are very important skills. For instance, my brother and I actually were flunking our classes but when everyone would be scratching their heads when the standardized test came along and we were scoring in the 90-99th percentile consistently.

If it weren't for standardized tests my life may have turned out very differently given that I came from a broken home and grew up in the ghettos. Objective non discriminatory tests have allowed me to be the person who I am today. I am now a minority with a college education, completing my masters, one exam left on the CPA exam (another standardized exam). Yes I have standardized tests to thank for showing others (as well as proving to myself) that I wasn't less than anyone else.

[ArmorPierce]

Things like this article is why I feel like standardize objective tests are superior to 'professional' judgement

http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/10/t ... nts-study/

and

http://www.9news.com/story/news/educati ... /11369257/

[Elheru Aran]

Ultimately the problem with over-reliance on standardized testing is that teachers end up teaching the test, not the material. Classes become "learn x and y because they'll be on the test", not "learn x and y because you'll use them this way in real life". Teacher's jobs can depend on the performance of their classes in these tests, rather than how well the children are learning in general.

We're having that problem right now in states which are still sticking to No Child Left Behind-style policies... it's a bit of a mess.

[Simon_Jester]

I would far rather rely on objective standardized tests than the 'professional' judgement of a single individual. All too often I've seen professional judgement being used to benefit certain individuals and to the detriment of certain individuals.

If kids could be taught like products on an assembly line, you would not have been flunking those classes, Pierce. Seriously, think about it. Because we'd already know "how to teach," and there would be one right way to do it for all kids, regardless of their background, aptitude, and natural skill level.

We'd just have one teacher record videotaped lectures and deliver them to thousands of kids at a time, because there's a very simple, objective way of measuring which way is 'best' for kids and which ways don't work?

Breaking news: it does not work that way. If there was enough manpower to go around it would be very much worthwhile to have competent educators looking at each individual child to assess their strengths and weaknesses and devoting large amounts of time to cultivating each child. Since that isn't possible, we still need trained people who can at least try to actually tailor the Curriculum From On High to fit with each individual classroom and each individual group of students in a massively diverse nation.

Having a test which cannot ever reflect the necessary tailoring, and which will blame the teachers for doing anything other than teaching to the exact standard of the test (sensible or nonsensical though it may be)... really doesn't help as much as you think.

If they are behind, put them into a remedial class but still test them to ascertain progress.

Many of the school districts I'm familiar with simply don't do that properly, not least because standardized testing demands standardized teaching. Making any actual use of the test data becomes nearly impossible if the students aren't all on the same baseline.

But yes I do feel that standardized tests tests general knowledge/intelligence and reasoning skills, which I feel like are very important skills. For instance, my brother and I actually were flunking our classes but when everyone would be scratching their heads when the standardized test came along and we were scoring in the 90-99th percentile consistently.

Had you actually learned the material in the classes?

If not, then the tests were in fact delivering improper results because your teachers were being assessed on whether you had learned the material, not whether you were naturally good at figuring out multiple choice problems.

If so, then I can only assume you were flunking the classes for reasons of sheer bullshit adolescent psychosis, which is also a real issue in a child's ability to master challenging subjects... which is why colleges look at grades and not only the test scores.

If it weren't for standardized tests my life may have turned out very differently given that I came from a broken home and grew up in the ghettos. Objective non discriminatory tests have allowed me to be the person who I am today. I am now a minority with a college education, completing my masters, one exam left on the CPA exam (another standardized exam). Yes I have standardized tests to thank for showing others (as well as proving to myself) that I wasn't less than anyone else.

The flip side of this is all the kids who don't test well, don't independently develop good test-taking skills. Including a lot of kids with backgrounds basically identical to yours.

They wind up as the forgotten underclass of education, and their schools and educators are constantly punished and hammered to the extent that it actively impedes efforts to teach them or to do anything even slightly unconventional to help them learn. You may have been able to skip out on this, but a lot of people don't, and for them the standardized tests are doing very little to help.

What it comes down to is that objective measurements are good, but poking people endlessly with rulers until it becomes a distraction and a demoralizer is not. Using the measurements to perform a hatchet-job on underperforming schools in a difficult financial and social environment is not good either. And a test's "objective" results are only valuable if they measure the right things.

Things like this article is why I feel like standardize objective tests are superior to 'professional' judgement

http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/10/t ... nts-study/

and

http://www.9news.com/story/news/educati ... /11369257/

What I don't think you understand here is that it's not about whether teachers give kids As or Bs or Es. It's about the fact that the individual teachers have to, well, actually teach. There's a reason we still pay schoolteachers, and indeed keep escalating our expectations for how well trained and how professionally they will comport themselves. And why we don't rely on taped lectures even though the technology to do that has been around for forty or fifty years, and for all that time various people have been actively predicting that just this would happen.

There is a lot of interaction in determining what children need to know, how to convey that knowledge to them, what they can and cannot figure out for themselves in light of their existing knowledge and abilities. Teachers have to factor that in. There are a lot of X-factors left up to individual judgment by default, because no sane curriculum office will seriously believe that all schools in the district can teach exactly the same material at exactly the same pace and have it be anything other than a humiliating farce. Teachers have to teach, and have enough flexibility to actually teach rather than just chanting a ritual. Otherwise, learning will not take place.

...

Now, in principle standardized tests can be a good way to determine if they've done so. But if the tests are too numerous, or too intrusive, or disrupt the routine of the school day too frequently, or if students find themselves taking a dozen standardized tests on different subjects in rapid succession (happens in my school every spring)... it stops being a good thing.

And if the tests are too inflexible, if there is only one kind of mind that will be good at passing them, they can miss a lot of the intelligence and competence and potential that the students have- for example, they reward fast but superficial thinking over deep but profound thinking, because there's no time to impress someone with your big ideas or deep insight on a two-minute multiple choice question.

So they can easily become unfair to both teachers and students.

[JLTucker]

I would far rather rely on objective standardized tests than the 'professional' judgement of a single individual. All too often I've seen professional judgement being used to benefit certain individuals and to the detriment of certain individuals.

If they are behind, put them into a remedial class but still test them to ascertain progress.

But yes I do feel that standardized tests tests general knowledge/intelligence and reasoning skills, which I feel like are very important skills. For instance, my brother and I actually were flunking our classes but when everyone would be scratching their heads when the standardized test came along and we were scoring in the 90-99th percentile consistently.

If it weren't for standardized tests my life may have turned out very differently given that I came from a broken home and grew up in the ghettos. Objective non discriminatory tests have allowed me to be the person who I am today. I am now a minority with a college education, completing my masters, one exam left on the CPA exam (another standardized exam). Yes I have standardized tests to thank for showing others (as well as proving to myself) that I wasn't less than anyone else.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Motherfucking NO. We'd still end up teaching for the tests and the students would not learn a goddamned thing. They would simply memorize and fuck up when they get to college. I sat with a room of Calculus III students this term who struggled because they could not grasp the content. The professor stresses that because he asks questions on the exams to prove we know it. Imagine some poor soul who was taught to pass the tests you adore fail college algebra because of the same reason. Understanding the content is key. Standardized testing does not put priority in understanding the content.

Your experience is common, but just because it works for you and others does not mean we should implement it nationwide. Students learn differently. Some are kinesthetic learners, some visual, some unable to do well on tests. The goal should be to try your best to cater to each student's needs, as Simon pointed out. There is no single right way for students to learn.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, one of the big things associated with Common Core (the new big thing in education in the US) is to create better standardized tests that DO test understanding of the content.

The problem is that these tests are still in the cruddy prototype alpha release stage (I should know, I was part of the alpha testing), and in many cases we honestly don't know how to take low performing students and ensure that they DO understand the content, well enough for them to pass the tests. We're trying, we really are, at least in my district... but it's not an easy challenge.

If it were easy we'd already be doing it, and no one would feel a need for extensive testing regimens.

[ArmorPierce]

I will try to address the other points later, discussion is getting long and am busy studying for a standardized test myself.

What does it mean to teach to the test? Unless you are looking at the same questions as are on the test, which is something that happens more in a classroom setting versus a standardized tests with a no disclosure policy, you more have to have a understanding of the material rather than knowing how to take a test. How do you prove that you know the material if you are failing the exams?

[Purple]

To be fair, one of the big things associated with Common Core (the new big thing in education in the US) is to create better standardized tests that DO test understanding of the content.

The problem is that these tests are still in the cruddy prototype alpha release stage (I should know, I was part of the alpha testing), and in many cases we honestly don't know how to take low performing students and ensure that they DO understand the content, well enough for them to pass the tests. We're trying, we really are, at least in my district... but it's not an easy challenge.

If it were easy we'd already be doing it, and no one would feel a need for extensive testing regimens.

This might sound odd to you. But would it be possible to consider that perhaps "low performing" students are actually not supposed to pass the test? Hence the "low performing" as in "performing lower than the average"? Or is it just government policy that outright forbids that?

[Elheru Aran]

What does it mean to teach to the test? Unless you are looking at the same questions as are on the test, which is something that happens more in a classroom setting versus a standardized tests with a no disclosure policy, you more have to have a understanding of the material rather than knowing how to take a test. How do you prove that you know the material if you are failing the exams?

"Teaching the test" is a practice common these days. You don't have the same questions-- that's basically cheating-- but you take very similar questions and drill the kids in them until they can work their way through them without much difficulty. Multiple-choice tests are especially egregious, as it's merely a matter of teaching kids to recognize wrong answers, eliminate them, and do the minimum of work necessary to figure out which is the right answer.

It's not really understanding the material as much as it is knowing only enough to actually pass the material. To put it another way, it's like being asked what, oh, Les Miserables is about, and you just know that it has something to do with Jean Valjean, a little girl, and redemption. Maybe that's the right answer, but you still don't really know much of anything about the book. If you actually read the book, you get a much clearer picture and deeper understanding of the material.

[Simon_Jester]

I will try to address the other points later, discussion is getting long and am busy studying for a standardized test myself.

What does it mean to teach to the test? Unless you are looking at the same questions as are on the test, which is something that happens more in a classroom setting versus a standardized tests with a no disclosure policy, you more have to have a understanding of the material rather than knowing how to take a test. How do you prove that you know the material if you are failing the exams?

Genre savviness. You teach the children to do the sorts of things they have to do on standardized tests (hint: not the same things they need to, for example, apply mathematics effectively to solve longer, more complex, more ambiguous problems). You constantly drill the students using publicly released questions off past exams (which are always available). You review the list of topics on the test (which has to be predictable, or the test results are not standardized and can't be compared between one year and the next), and teach those topics, regardless of whether or not in your opinion those subjects are helping the students build up a coherent understanding of the content. Because your opinion is not relevant. The test is.

Don't take my word for it. Ask literally any public school teacher. There's millions of 'em.

In math this results in the students being relentlessly drilled in process, but learning very little about how to, say, solve word problems. Thing is, solving word problems is essential to being able to apply even basic arithmetic in real life... but the average standardized test simply doesn't have room for many serious word problems, because they take too much time to solve and there are too many standards to test the kids on.

Anyway, despite this a standardized test CAN work great, assuming the experts who wrote the test know what should be taught and how to test for the knowledge of those lessons. Since you have so little faith in the power of individual teachers' professional judgment, I'm sure you don't have much faith in the power of individual consultants' professional judgment...

To be fair, one of the big things associated with Common Core (the new big thing in education in the US) is to create better standardized tests that DO test understanding of the content.

The problem is that these tests are still in the cruddy prototype alpha release stage (I should know, I was part of the alpha testing), and in many cases we honestly don't know how to take low performing students and ensure that they DO understand the content, well enough for them to pass the tests. We're trying, we really are, at least in my district... but it's not an easy challenge.

If it were easy we'd already be doing it, and no one would feel a need for extensive testing regimens.

This might sound odd to you. But would it be possible to consider that perhaps "low performing" students are actually not supposed to pass the test? Hence the "low performing" as in "performing lower than the average"? Or is it just government policy that outright forbids that?

Thing is, the tests aren't there to judge which students are best. They're there to judge if the students are 'proficient' or not.

And if a significant percentage of my students are not 'proficient' in the subject the school told me to teach, I am to blame, the official line goes. I am the one who needs to up my game, not them. Never mind if some of them are irresponsible bozos who spend a third of their time skipping school, a third of their time wandering the halls, and most of the other third being disruptive IN class; their poor performance is assumed to reflect on me as an educator, not on the parents or the students themselves.

This is called in the business "high-stakes testing," because there can be real and ruinous consequences for individual teachers, for principals, for whole schools and even whole districts, if your test scores stay too low to satisfy higher echelons of the system.

Personally, I am of the opinion that American schools could create a much more educated populace than we actually do, if we were prepared to expel 5% or so of the student body for incorrigible bad behavior, or sheer refusal to participate in their own education. But since the public schools have an official mandate to teach anyone who shows up, and are punished for failing to teach any one who shows up... we have to try. Even if that means that we produce worse outcomes for the student body as a whole because of all the time and effort expended dealing with the troublemakers and the kids who go on strike.

[Civil War Man]

What does it mean to teach to the test? Unless you are looking at the same questions as are on the test, which is something that happens more in a classroom setting versus a standardized tests with a no disclosure policy, you more have to have a understanding of the material rather than knowing how to take a test. How do you prove that you know the material if you are failing the exams?

Some examples of teaching to the test:
Only teaching topics that are on the test, and omitting everything else. The teachers may not know the exact questions being asked, but they would know what will be covered.
Running regular practice tests to get students used to the testing environment, which is just as important to passing the test as knowing what's on it, if not more.
Teaching by rote memorization, since knowing the correct answer is tested, but not understanding the underlying concept. If a student memorizes multiplication tables, they will know that 4x5=20 and 9x6=54. As long as they can retain that information long enough for the test, they will pass the multiplication portion of the test, even if they have no idea why 4x5=20 and 9x6=54. And if they immediately forget those factoids after the test in order to free up enough space to cram the next set of factoids, that's okay, because they've already passed the test where those answers were considered relevant.

[ArmorPierce]

In my opinion, that's the best way to learn. You lay out the foundation through repition. Once the foundation is laid out and it automatic you can move on to learning the bigger picture and more complex things. I think that's how it should work ideally. If you can't get into the trenches and work the nitty gritty I would argue that no, you don't understand.

I feel that a lot of topics are simply to complex to take it in all at once, you need to take it in CHUNKS. Drilling questions is a effective way of both taking in chunks of information and testing your knowledge.

I saw some people making the same excuse when they said that they don't practice the homework and drill the problems for the tests because they want to understand the full picture from the readings. I did both, it seemed to me that they just didn't want to drill the homework problems.

[Elheru Aran]

Because rote repetition isn't necessarily going to help you learn how to apply stuff to real life better.

To use a crude example, say you're taught the multiplication tables by memory. If someone asks you 5 times 4, you can rattle out 20. But, real-world example, you're asked to count a pile of bricks. They happen to be arranged in a 5x4 stack, but are you going to remember that you can just consider that to mean that each layer is 20 bricks, minus any missing at the top? Things like that.

If you want to get even more fancy, consider calculus and applying it to movement or something like that. A few years ago, Aerius shared an incident where a friend of his got a speeding ticket. He was able to get out of it by demonstrating with calculus how it would have been impossible for him to be speeding within the parameters given. If you don't actually understand the fundamental principles of calculus, you can't break the situation down into an equation.

Bear in mind that "teaching the test" has more applicability towards the sciences and math than it does the liberal arts, but there's still a degree of it in things like literature, English, art and such.

The central point is this: If students do not understand the principles behind what they are learning, they cannot apply it towards things in real life. It doesn't matter if they're testing fine on it, if they don't *understand* it, it won't help them.

[Block]

Pierce, read up on how effective contextual learning is, and the how neural pathways work and see if you still feel that way. Learning why something is the way it is helps things stick a lot better than mindless repetition.

[Civil War Man]

In my opinion, that's the best way to learn. You lay out the foundation through repition. Once the foundation is laid out and it automatic you can move on to learning the bigger picture and more complex things. I think that's how it should work ideally. If you can't get into the trenches and work the nitty gritty I would argue that no, you don't understand.

I feel that a lot of topics are simply to complex to take it in all at once, you need to take it in CHUNKS. Drilling questions is a effective way of both taking in chunks of information and testing your knowledge.

I saw some people making the same excuse when they said that they don't practice the homework and drill the problems for the tests because they want to understand the full picture from the readings. I did both, it seemed to me that they just didn't want to drill the homework problems.

Rote learning is fine when the topic doesn't really have any context, but is horrible for topics that do. There's no problem using rote learning in order to remember how to locate a country on a map, but it doesn't teach you to understand the country's relationships with its neighbors. Standardized testing focuses entirely on the former, since they are all about recall as opposed to comprehension, but claim to test for both.

What makes them even worse is that they tend to be entirely multiple choice or true/false because then you can stuff the answer sheets into a machine and grade 1000 in a few minutes. Thing is, with those kinds of tests, you could have someone ace it because they understood the subject, you could have someone ace it because they are just regurgigating what the teacher told them during the drills without the slightest comprehension of what those ideas mean, or you could have someone ace it because they chose their answers randomly and just happened to get most of them right through sheer dumb luck. How is that supposed to be an accurate assessment of what the students learned during the school year?

[Purple]

How does this testing work anyway? Does the teacher just hand it out in the classroom? What's stopping the schools from simply collectively choosing to cheat?

[Elheru Aran]

How does this testing work anyway? Does the teacher just hand it out in the classroom? What's stopping the schools from simply collectively choosing to cheat?

In general they are written by a private company, usually ones with a history of compiling exams, such as the one that puts together the SAT test, which is one standardized test with a decent history in the US-- it's been used for several decades and is part of the process of getting into higher education (college and university). These tests are then provided to school systems which request them. Generally answer-checking is done by machine; a LOT of these tests are done by fill-in-the-little-circle forms.

Typically, a number of special days during the school year are set aside for administering these tests. Often this is usually closer to the end of the year, although some occur during the beginning or middle. The company who administers the test may set this day, or the school system may. Sometimes the teachers hand them out in class, sometimes the students go to a special area for testing. Usually there's rules like "only a calculator and a number two pencil allowed, turn off your cell phones," etc-- the number-two pencil thing has become cliche actually for how often it's used. Apparently it gives the ideal darkness for filling in the little circles or something. Sometimes scratch-paper is permitted, but usually not.

Cheating is usually pursued with serious legal consequences; if it's extreme enough, an outside agency may become involved.

As an example: Atlanta Public Schools has over the past decade or so been incriminated in a serious cheating scandal. This caused the grades to seemingly jump several points, when there are good reasons to believe that they were manipulated by school administration giving students the answers to their tests. As a result the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (state version of the FBI) got involved, and there are criminal proceedings currently underway. Several careers have been ruined over this.

One big problem with standardized testing in the US is that they have become a job metric for teachers. If a teacher's students consistently do poorly on the tests, it is concluded that the teacher is doing a poor job of instruction. This may or may not be true, thanks to all the other reasons why standardized tests have issues. Regardless of the teacher's actual performance and the actual performance of their students, he or she may be fired depending upon the results of these tests. As such, they have become extremely unpopular among actual teachers... but administrators love them because they don't have to actually pay attention to classes and students anymore. Just look at the tests and boom!

[ArmorPierce]

I am not advocating for rote memorization. I feel that standardized tests requires more than rote memorization. I think that school standardized tests (assuming they are the same as when I have taken them) have too much material for rote memorization to be an effective strategy. I feel that standardized tests test an individual's ability more than simply their 'memorization.'

I think that drilling questions is an effective tool if used correctly, but that is up to the individual. Sure you can just look at the question and answer, but then you are doing it wrong. People learn from doing moreso than from passively sitting and listening, and tests and questions allows one to do this.

[JLTucker]

In my opinion, that's the best way to learn. You lay out the foundation through repition. Once the foundation is laid out and it automatic you can move on to learning the bigger picture and more complex things. I think that's how it should work ideally. If you can't get into the trenches and work the nitty gritty I would argue that no, you don't understand.

I feel that a lot of topics are simply to complex to take it in all at once, you need to take it in CHUNKS. Drilling questions is a effective way of both taking in chunks of information and testing your knowledge.

I don't believe this to be the case. The foundation is not laid out through repetition, but instead when you comprehend a concept well enough to apply it elsewhere. For instance, in Calculus III, you learn early on about vectors being perpendicular to each other. This is true when the dot product of the two vectors is zero. If you are given two vectors and asked to calculate their dot product, you've only performed the arithmetic. Anyone can do that through repetition. But if you're asked to write a conclusion about the result you obtained, you've partially understood the material. The foundation has been laid. Now you can employ the dot product in other scenarios and draw further conclusions.

For a literal example, here are some questions from an exam I took.

"Given that C = A X B, and given that C does not equal 0, explain why the line segments OA and OC are perpendicular to each other."

"Given that the triangle is located in the plane in such a way that the origin O is the center of the circle that passes through the points A, B, and C, and given that H = A + B + C, explain why AH is perpendicular to BC."

The dot product is involved with both of those. If you did not know that vectors are perpendicular to each other when their dot product is zero, you'd be screwed. Naturally, high school math isn't going to be of this caliber in many schools, but the effect is the same.

[ArmorPierce]

Okay guys question. Without standardized tests how do you differentiate between those who actually know the material relative to those who just copy all the answers and works from others?

Is it from class room participation? Lots of issues with that such as shyness, other students picking or encouraging lack of participation, and people just being good BSers.

Or do we just pass everyone for trying?

[JLTucker]

Okay guys question. Without standardized tests how do you differentiate between those who actually know the material relative to those who just copy all the answers and works from others?

Is it from class room participation? Lots of issues with that such as shyness, other students picking or encouraging lack of participation, and people just being good BSers.

Or do we just pass everyone for trying?

The ideal solution would be to have the students demonstrate the material to you. It would be insanely difficult to implement this, however. Another method would be to have the students explain each step in the process of solving a problem on a test.

[Elheru Aran]

In-classroom tests and pop quizzes help to some extent. Cheating is a bit less prevalent than you might think (though I'm under no illusions).

The biggest thing here is the teacher and their ability to work with their students. A good teacher can call a kid on BS, puncture their bubble, and then encourage them to actually learn what they're working on. Good teachers can also spot cheating and reduce it by watching the classroom, comparing exam sheets, etc.

You don't pass people for trying; but if you know a kid really is trying hard rather than just going through the motions, then you know you'll be able to encourage them to understand the material.

Honestly though, this is an ideal situation. In the real world... the majority of teachers have too many kids to put up with, shitty school situations, restrictions holding them back from enforcing discipline in an appropriate manner, parents attacking them for correcting their child, etc... the atmosphere that the American public school systems find themselves in for the most part has been fucked up for the past few decades. Private school is entirely another can of worms.

[JLTucker]

Honestly though, this is an ideal situation. In the real world... the majority of teachers have too many kids to put up with, shitty school situations, restrictions holding them back from enforcing discipline in an appropriate manner, parents attacking them for correcting their child, etc... the atmosphere that the American public school systems find themselves in for the most part has been fucked up for the past few decades. Private school is entirely another can of worms.

And it doesn't help when assholes are trying to make it more difficult for teachers to obtain due process.

[Simon_Jester]

Okay guys question. Without standardized tests how do you differentiate between those who actually know the material relative to those who just copy all the answers and works from others?

As an individual teacher I can create non-standardized tests on my own power, for one.

Also, it is frankly easier to detect cheating on a non-standardized test, at least in mathematics, because then the kids' actual shown work matters and you can tell if everyone did the identical thing. You can also identify the bizarre WTF errors that result when kids copy homework and can't read the other kid's handwriting and ignorantly copy a semicolon as a five, or fail to spot the decimal point, or whatever. Because they're honestly giving the problem no thought whatsoever.

[It is darkly amusing when five or six people all answer the same question the same wrong way and I'm thinking in my head something like: "hey kids, did the other four or five of you even stop to think about whether this answer makes any sense?"]

Whereas with a standardized test, all you really have to go on are the answers, and in theory everyone's answers should be close to the same. The only exception comes when much of the class has no idea what the hell they're doing and their answers are all over the map, quasi-random... in which case all you've learned is that the class as a whole has no idea what they're doing. Which I could have told you, and did, and have literally been doing I could think of and force myself to do all year long to remedy with varying and limited success...

Is it from class room participation? Lots of issues with that such as shyness, other students picking or encouraging lack of participation, and people just being good BSers.

Or do we just pass everyone for trying?

See, HAVING standardized tests isn't even the problem. The problem is fetishizing them.

The problem is screwing with whole school systems to the point where the standardized test scores are the only thing the administration even cares about and they let other things go to hell. The problem is having tests that disrupt the school schedule for weeks on end. The problem is having tests reach the point where security and organization of an unending cycle of standardized tests is such an all-consuming fear (because of how desperate schools are to improve their scores) that your high school with its semi-urban demographic needs to blow something close to 100k a year paying someone whose sole responsibility is to make sure that all the numerous state tests are taken on time, distributed on time, that the paperwork is filed and that the scores are not invalidated by suspicious county officials.

The problem is having so many tests that exist purely to feed the state diagnostic data and are NOT used to test whether the kids pass or fail the class that they get used to the idea that many or most of their tests have no impact on their academic future, so they start blowing off tests because in their experience tests are bullshit.

That's the world I live in. It may not be the same world you think modern American education lives in, but it kind of is. And as a result we're turning out a generation where, aside from a handful of the very cleverest, nearly everyone is educated to fill out multiple choice questions- i.e. not educated very thoroughly.

[aerius]

Okay guys question. Without standardized tests how do you differentiate between those who actually know the material relative to those who just copy all the answers and works from others?

Teacher makes up 2-4 different versions of the test. Numbers are changed or question order is different. Good luck cheating when no one beside you has the same test as you. One of my high school science teachers did this to us all on all of his tests, and he'd walk around the room during the tests to ensure that everyone had their eyes on their own papers. Anyone caught trying to cheat had his test ripped up on the spot. After the first couple tests got shredded, no one even thought about trying to copy answers from others.

Same technique was used in many of my university courses, except there were up to 8 versions of the test depending its importance and the size of the class. Cheating was pretty much impossible, anyone who got caught was flunked on the spot and kicked out of the room.