[brodouevencode]

What if the standardized tests aren't administered by the teacher? That seems like it would be an easy solution to get around the cheating problem.

As for teaching to the test, what's the real downfall of doing that? Colleges use standardized test scores as the biggest or one of the biggest criteria in admission.

[lahvak]

> What if the standardized tests aren't administered by the teacher? That seems like it would be an easy solution to get around the cheating problem.

In order for the test scores to be granular enough to be used as measure of performance of individual teachers, the testing would have to be done fairly often. The schools and school districts that are already lacking funds for basic stuff like maintenance and teacher and staff salaries would have hard time to pay an additional subject to administer the test.

With the frequency and volume of testing, it would likely be too costly to do the testing in an external testing facility (which most districts do not have), so it would have to be done on site. I remember my kids telling me that every time before they took a standardized test (it happens once a year around here), the teachers told them basically "we cannot give you the answers, but look around, the answers may already be there, there may be a poster hanging on the wall or something else like that that may be helpful."

[ufo]

The downfall is that in theory the purpose of school is to educate, not merely get people enough points to be admitted to college.

[dmix]

The schools are free to design their own pay packages right? The state isn't mandating that pay be tied to tests. This is mostly just an assumption that that would be the only metric used.

[RecycledEle]

> The schools are free to design their own pay packages right?

No. Most if the time, state laws set limits on what school districts can do.

[thaumasiotes]

And the purpose of the test is to see whether the education took. Teaching to the test is the whole point of the test.

[bena]

> As for teaching to the test, what's the real downfall of doing that?

This comment is a perfect encapsulation of AI hype.

Recitation is not competence. It doesn't matter if Bobby can say "4" when I say "What is 2 + 2?". What matters is if Bobby can add.

[ryathal]

Test questions are written to test varying levels of competence from basic recall to true mastery. It's partially why so many people hate word problems, they don't actually understand the concepts. Many others just can't read.

[Hizonner]

Test questions can be written to assess true mastery, although it's not so easy as you're trying to make it sound... especially if you want the test to take a sane amount of time, be consistently gradable by different graders, and have any kind of reasonable signal to noise ratio. But sure, you can get there, or at least go a long way toward it.

If you try to actually create tests that way, you will discover that the institutions and political atmosphere around you will punish you harshly. It's "unfair" to give a test that you can't pass by memorizing things, you see. And the people who will ultimately make the decisions about what you're allowed to do with your test are rarely going to care much about actual mastery, and often wouldn't be able to recognize mastery if they did care.

In practice, standardized tests are always going to be easily gamed, so if you make people's and institutions' rewards dependent on them, you will end up diverting more time, energy, and other resources away from actually teaching mastery and into meaningless gaming.

[ryathal]

Standardized tests spend the money and time to get those quality questions that are consistently graded. It's not some random folks making minimum wage coming up with questions.

[paulryanrogers]

Teaching the test narrows the subject matter significantly. Some of the most important things I learned in school weren't directly on tests: critical thinking, fallacies, cultural studies, how to avoid being exploited.

That said, in some circumstances only teaching the test could be an improvement.

[readthenotes1]

I was in a meeting once where an outside advisor asked the test group to share the test cases with the developers.

"But if we do that," the test manager complained, "the code will only work for the tests."

"Well, wouldn't that be a nice change." observed the Director.

[somethingsome]

One of the problem is that you can train the students to overfit any test, and that's worse than cheating which represent only a small number of students usually.

So by incentiving the teachers to make the students perform well in some tests, why teach real lessons when you can just throw at them cheat codes for the test.

[dwater]

If a teacher knows or suspects what questions will be on the test, they can drill their students to memorize the answers the week before the test. That's cheating and it doesn't matter who proctors the test.

[readthenotes1]

I once taught a class for teachers and after so many failed to be able to apply the quadratic equation, I told him that it would be the bonus question for the next test.

After so many then failed I told them that just writing the formula would be the bonus question on the next test.

Very few people got the bonus question.

In order to drill students to memorize, that students have to be present enough and interested enough for it to stick...

[dwater]

When I was in my teaching Masters program, we talked a lot about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is when you want to do something for yourself, e.g. you enjoy the satisfaction of solving a problem. Extrinsic motivation is when your reason for doing it comes from outside yourself, e.g. your parents tell you they'll give you $20 for every A you get on your report card. The district I worked in experimented with extrinsic motivators to get students to attend school and perform well on the test with rewards like food, gift cards, and electronics. That was enough to get some students to try to do better, but usually only the students who already had some intrinsic motivation. The students that they were really trying to motivate were the ones with no intrinsic motivation, and they largely ignored the rewards offered.

[readthenotes1]

_Punished by Rewards_ is a great book on the topic. For your experiment, I curious how you controlled for suppressing counter motivations (e.g., peer pressure, pride, etc.)

The class was a required class for teachers to get their education degree. Back then, they had to have that degree in order to teach in the schools.

I doubt that many of them were thrilled for math, especially the more foundational topics we were going through so yes, their intrinsic motivation was mostly not high.

However their extrinsic motivation should have been off the charts. They literally couldn't get their degree without passing the course. Many were repeating the course having failed it before, so their chances were running out.

I do not recall any of the students being the normal 18 to 21 college students - - they were all older. They better understood why they were choosing their degree (looking back, based on demographics, I suspect many were divorcees prepping for a career or moms whose children had started school).

I gave the memorization question as a way to see how much of it was the work they were putting in and much was my inability to explain the difficult material in a way they could understand.

[IOT_Apprentice]

It may be that the manner in which you are teaching that topic is itself failing. Your students don’t understand, investigate how to improve your approach in explaining which results in them understanding. Decompose the steps to see where that understanding is not happening.

[readthenotes1]

It was decades ago so the advice is too late. As I taught other students successfully at the time (in that most seemed to grasp the material), there may be some other problems.

I boiled it down to "just write the equation down" to see if it were my teaching or their desire.

The inability for many to successfully replicate the formula indicated to me that they weren't putting the time in to memorize.

Since these were more adult learners going for their teaching degree, and many repeating the class having failed to pass it the first time, my observations beyond "I wasn't capable" are: - the course material was difficult (a rapid survey of math foundation, including some group theory) - they couldn't make the time because of other life commitments, exacerbated by being a summer course where we met every day.

I had one student, who had never scored higher than 50 on a test, show up after the final to ask if there was anything she could do to pass the class as it was required and she had flunked now 3 times and couldn't repeat it. "All I want to do is teach 3rd grade, I don't need any of this" she explained. There was nothing i could do...

[waveBidder]

when a metric becomes the target, it ceases to be a good metric