Why improve when you can sue? Maybe Johnny can't read cuz teacher has teh dumb.

The BBQ Pit
41

[QUOTE=Dushichka]
Another example of cultural bias occurred some years ago on, I believe, the SATs…The passage in question had students identify what a regatta was…How many non-upper class students are going to know what a regatta is? …
[/QUOTE]

I grew up in a middle class white home outside of Cleveland. We didn’t participate in regattas. We bowled instead.

But I read about regattas in library books.

Seriously, that’s a pretty goofy complaint. Am I supposed to assume that only rich people should know what diamonds are, since I can’t afford to buy them?

42

[QUOTE=silenus]
I agree. Most teacher tests are a joke because they don’t and can’t test what really counts. OTOH, the California Basic Educational Skills Tests(CBEST) for teachers is set at the 8th grade level! And when I took it 20 years ago, there were people in the room on their 5th or 6th go-around with it. Personally, I don’t want those people in my profession.
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And of course, there’s the whole issue of attracting and retaining the kind of people you do want. I’ll be brutally honest: there are a lot of teachers who like the idea that they don’t have to be brilliant, they can have the same job for the duration of their career, and, even thought the money is not fantastic, it’s (almost) guaranteed. One of the many problems that a lot of taxpayers don’t want to hear (and I can’t blame them) is that in order to attract a better, harder-working, more inventive brand of teacher, we’re going to have to offer more incentives. There is still the hugely negative stereotype of “those who can do, those who can’t, teach.” I don’t dispute that there are a lot of teachers who can’t do. However, we ain’t gonna get sumpin’ for nutin. There has to be good pay, and, even better, a career path - not just a job for life.

One thing that I think might help - and we’re starting to see this come about - is a kind of admin-teacher position. The Department (or Grade-Level) Heads, in some areas, are starting to teach fewer classes, but have time in their schedule for teacher evaluation, administrative duties, etc. If this is done right, and those involved are getting admin pay, I think it’s a fantastic idea.

43

I will grant that the *possibility * exists that the tests might be culturally biased. However, I see that as a non-starter for an adult who wants to be a teacher. A child who has absolutely no other cultural background or opportunity to be exposed to anything I can understand…but someone who has had life experiences and (ideally) a college degree and wants to teach in what would likely be a culturally diverse setting doesn’t get my sympathy in that respect. I also don’t for the life of me see why “regatta” is culturally biased on a test that is about 50% vocabulary-related. But, I suppose experts have decided my sensitivity in that matter is lacking…! Overall, I find these wannabe-teachers unprofessional and embarrassing.

However, this can’t stand:

[QUOTE=magellan01]
I love it. Teachers complaining that one test can ruin their careers. Have they heard of the SATs?
[/QUOTE]
You want to explain to me what any teacher has to do with the SAT? How it pertains to teachers at all? How they have any say in it whatsoever? Now, if you had talked about high-stakes testing (like graduation exams and the like), you might have a leg to stand on…if you ignored the fact that teachers also have zero say whatsoever in high stakes testing, No Child Left Behind, and whatever else. Hell, most teachers fight against high-stakes testing tooth-and-nail (I support the concept, but I’ve never been happy with the product).

44

…and this is exactly how it should be done. You don’t have to look for for a reason why a question seems to underperform for a subgroup…it just does, so kill the question.

Also, there is a difference between being given the rules for something and actually have experience doing it. Long ago, I took a pre-employment exam testing Math skills for a company. The questions were hugely finance related (options/strike price etc.) Now, they explained everything but if you had experience with how it worked, the test was much less stressful and took much less time. I had some experience and the test was relatively easy for me, but others taking it didn’t.

Now, if I knew nothing about the material, I could still have figured it out, but it would take more effort and time…and since it was a timed test…the stress level would rocket. The test was not a ‘fair’ test of math skills between people.

Now, the company was financial, so it made sense…they wanted people who knew it or could learn it quickly. In education, it would just be wrong.

So, a question relying on american football…even if given the information…would probably show many subgroups not doing as well. Kill the question and find one that does better. There is no shortage of questions.

45

[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck]
:: Gets popcorn and pulls up comfortable chair. ::
[/QUOTE]
Li’L Pluck, we discourage “pulls up a chair to watch the fireworks” kinds of posts, as they don’t add much if anything to a thread. Please refrain in the future (although you can finish your popcorn first).

46

This is so unbelievably right on. And not only good pay, but a decent working environment. In the school where my husband teaches, they don’t get a lunch break. They’re expected to monitor the kids during lunch while trying to eat their own. As a result, he often doesn’t get to eat until 3:30. Stuff like that can really wear you down.

I gotta say, though, I don’t have much sympathy for the teachers who failed the test. You want to teach math and writing–you better damn well have mastery of the material. You fail the first time, you study your ass off so you can pass the next time.

47

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Well, in Ohio, (and Wisconsin and, I suspect, a number of other states), charter schools are the only options other than a few parochial schools. Charter schools are simply the term used to identify the non-parochial schools that were started up for the purpose of grabbing voucher money.
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Do you have a cite for this? A charter school is still a public school run with public money that’s governed by a charter (and as a result, freed from certain locally imposed regulations). If you, and others, refer to private schools as charter schools, I think you’re probably simply using the wrong terminology.

Vouchers, on the other hand, are basically private school coupons given by the state and, IMO, are a boon to the upper middle class because the voucher amount is generally insufficient to cover any meaningful portion of a good private school’s tuition, thus making the voucher useless to the lower and middle classes that cannot make up the difference.

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
The picture was something like this, although it didn’t move. Problem is, in our house, we don’t eat cookies like that. This animal cracker or these graham crackers are “cookies” here.
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.

I don’t think this is a good example. You’ve only demonstrated that in your house you’ve chosen to refer to certain types of crackers as cookies. Why? Who knows? Did it make the test less effective, sure, but I hardly think test makers should have to account for people swapping common nouns.

As for claims of bias, I believe that they can be legitimate. Yesterday, I was goofing around and took an internet IQ test. One of the questions was a “which one of these does not belong” question. My choices were: peaches, plums, cherries, grapes and apricots. I’d never eaten an apricot. I knew what they were generally – even knew what they looked like, sort of, but I was unsure whether they had a pit (this would be the common characteristic with peaches, plums and cherries.) If they didn’t, then I would need to look for some other commonality among the fruit. You might say, well, you know grapes don’t have pits, so by process of elimination, go with apricots, but that reasoning might fail you because sometimes, these questions are designed to make you look for a more subtle similarity. Now whether my having never seen an apricot is a product of geography (I was raised in the coastal deep south) or something else, I don’t know. If I could have just asked someone whether apricots had pits, I would have been fine (and I would hardly have considered it cheating).

48

[QUOTE=Ukulele Ike]
But I read about regattas in library books. <snip> Am I supposed to assume that only rich people should know what diamonds are, since I can’t afford to buy them?
[/QUOTE]

Well, yeah, but what if everyone didn’t read the same kinds of books that you read when you were growing up? I mean, it happens. And fairly often, I’d bet. Different personal interests, even different school curricula.

And, really, comparing knowing what a regatta is to knowing what a diamond is, when regattas simply don’t have the same kind of cultural relevance that diamonds do strikes me as somewhat elitist. I’m not trying to pick a fight here (and I’m not saying definitively that you are, in fact, elitist, as I’m not familiar enough with you)–just sayin’ is all.

I mean, hell, would you presume that everyone who uses the internet knows what the Dope is just because *we * do?

Or would it fair for me, who grew up listening to country music (along with jazz, gospel, Motown, and classical), to expect everyone else to know who, say, Patsy Cline was because they also listen to music?

[QUOTE=lilflower]
You do not have to attend a regatta to know what one is, nor do you have to know anyone who’s been to a regatta or have ever discussed a regatta while lying around your croquet lawn sipping tea having just returned from a shopping spree at Barney’s. I’ve never been to a quinceanara but I know what one is. Also, I would be surprised if the SAT question to which you are referring is something like “What do you do at a regatta?”. I would assume there is some reference to boating or a lake or what have you to help the test taker use some deductive reasoning to answer the question. And if you do not know what a regatta is, perhaps the question is more difficult but not impossible, I’m sure.
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I agree that one doesn’t need to have attended a regatta (or have a croquet lawn upon which to lie) in order to know what a regatta is. However, barring reading, as **Ukulele Ike ** suggested ('cause, again, not everyone reads the same kinds of books, and, besides, it’s not as if regattas–to my knowledge, anyway–are among the most discussed things in the world), how else would someone who, say, didn’t grow up in Philly (and would therefore be more likely than most people to hear about regattas since that’s where the annual Dad Vail Regatta is held) know what a regatta is?

I imagine that if I’d been raised primarily back home in rural South Carolina, I might not have come to know what a regatta is.

And quinceanera? Again, it’s only within the last <10 years or so that I’ve noticed an influx of Mexican immigrants in rural South Carolina–and, even then, you have to go to the next “real” semblence of a town six miles away to encounter what few there are–so if I’d stayed there and never left (and, therefore, not been exposed to large numbers of Latinos), I’d most likely not know what quinceanera means. (And, actually, I didn’t know what it was until after the movie of the same name came out.) Maybe next time I’m back home I’ll ask some of my relatives (some of whom have never been outside of the rural South) if they know what it is. I can alreay guess the results, though.

I think that **Dushickha ** made a good point. And so, too, did **WhyNot ** with the examples she provided.

49

[QUOTE=ArizonaTeach]
You want to explain to me what any teacher has to do with the SAT? How it pertains to teachers at all? How they have any say in it whatsoever? Now, if you had talked about high-stakes testing (like graduation exams and the like), you might have a leg to stand on…if you ignored the fact that teachers also have zero say whatsoever in high stakes testing, No Child Left Behind, and whatever else. Hell, most teachers fight against high-stakes testing tooth-and-nail (I support the concept, but I’ve never been happy with the product).
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Huh? I was simply using it as an example of a test that can determine one’s future. If you wind up with a 950, your chances of getting iinto Yale, Harvard or Stamford just dropped considerably. I’m not sure what you find confusiing or are objecting to. Could you clarify. I was using it just like a test like an MCAT. That help?

50

[QUOTE=tomndebb]

Yeah, there are plenty of for profit college prep high schools, although I do not recall any that would accept the pittance offered by most voucher plans–or that charge only as much as are currently being spent, per pupil, by large suburban school districts.
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I wasn’t talking about for-profit schools – all the private schools that I was thinking of are non-profits. In fact, I’m not aware of any for-profit primary or secondary schools anywhere around here (that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, though.)

I think you are quite confused about the difference between charter schools and traditional private schools.

51

[QUOTE=Eonwe]
Yes, which aren’t hobbled by the counter-productive federally-mandated regulations regarding who can be teaching in a classroom and who can’t.
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Yes. And who can be fired and for waht and how long it will take.

52

This reminds me of an incident when I was in high school. My social sciences teacher was the baseball coach, and he worded an exam question like this:

“Which of the two Native American tribes we studied lived where the Cubs have spring training?”

A couple people claimed the question was unfair, because they didn’t know anything about baseball. The thing is, one of the tribes we studied was from Arizona, and the other from Alaska. Isn’t this something one could figure out through logic, even if you don’t know much about baseball? Is this an example of cultural bias? I’m not sure.

He eventually agreed to give them the points for it, but I thought it was kind of lame that they couldn’t figure it out.

53

[QUOTE=Giraffe]
Li’L Pluck, we discourage “pulls up a chair to watch the fireworks” kinds of posts, as they don’t add much if anything to a thread. Please refrain in the future (although you can finish your popcorn first).
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Gotcha.

My apologies to the board.

(Guess I won’t be participating in that “Who’s never received a mod warning?” thread. Damn!) :smack:

54

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I can’t answer to this test, but I do have a very simple example (two, actually) of “cultural bias” on a standardized test.
[/QUOTE]

How are the examples you gave examples of cultural bias? Sounds more like “household” bias, which will change from home to home.

55

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
This reminds me of an incident when I was in high school. My social sciences teacher was the baseball coach, and he worded an exam question like this:

“Which of the two Native American tribes we studied lived where the Cubs have spring training?”

[/QUOTE]

I think you’re right that someone who was really thoughtful could answer the question. But I’d have to question the wisdom of throwing in the Cubs reference, since it masks the ignorance of students who don’t know anything about Native Americans but do know something about baseball.

But if it’s just one question, I don’t see the big dealskie.

56

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Ahh, the old “Private entrepeneurs can always do better than public servants” meme.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, no. I am not of that mind. Particularly the “all” part, which for some reason you try to ascribe to me, though I don’t see where you get that from my post. My opinion is that given the current state of education in the U.S., it is lazy and irresponsible to simply restrict ourselves to just the old ideas of how to educate our kids. Charter and Voucher schools are great options for us to have and assess. And that doesn’t mean that some won’t fail miserably. Perhaps we should look to those that perform with excellence and try ot use those as models, rather than you pointing to failings and use those to pooh-pooh the idea.

But the notion of the private sector creating a better product should be taken into account also. Look at K-12, we’re not doing so good, are we? Now look at our university system. It’s one of the best in the world. Coincidence. I think not.

57

[QUOTE=monstro]
I think you’re right that someone who was really thoughtful could answer the question. But I’d have to question the wisdom of throwing in the Cubs reference, since it masks the ignorance of students who don’t know anything about Native Americans but do know something about baseball.
[/QUOTE]
Except that it was a multiple-choice question, which listed it like this:

A. Tribe A
B. Tribe B
C. Both
D. Neither

So you had to at least know which tribe lived where before you could answer the question. Now, if Tribe A lived in Arizona, and Tribe B lived in Florida, I would agree that the way the question was worded was unfair to non-baseball fans.

It only was in the sense that the kids who were arguing over it tended to argue over a lot of questions, which was annoying.

But my thought is more this…does the mere fact that baseball is mentioned in the question make it culturally biased, or does it have to be deeper than that?

58

How can a math test be biased? It’s the word problems. The example I saw recently asked kids to total the weights of deli meats and cheeses, and then give prices. One of the items was pastrami. African American students didn’t know what it was, and some got the question wrong by assuming it was a cheese instead of a meat. That kind of thing does NOT test math skills; it tests your wide-ranging experiences with sandwiches.

Still, don’t know the specifics of why the teacher exams would be biased, since we’re dealing with adults and not kids. I’d like to see more details of the kinds of questions they object to. The PRAXIS tets are long, have essay questions and ethical questions and procedural questions; they’re quite detailed and covered things I never learned in my grad level education classes. I think it can never hurt to force standardized test companies to look over their instruments more carefully. I think they’re a bullshit way to evaluate a person for a teaching job, since they don’t actually test how good a teacher you are.

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[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck]
(Guess I won’t be participating in that “Who’s never received a mod warning?” thread. Damn!) :smack:
[/QUOTE]
No worries. And that wasn’t a warning, just a friendly request. (Warnings will have the word warning in there somewhere, either in the text or message title, e.g. “Mod warning:”)

60

[QUOTE=Giraffe]
No worries. And that wasn’t a warning, just a friendly request. (Warnings will have the word warning in there somewhere, either in the text or message title, e.g. “Mod warning:”)
[/QUOTE]

Ah, I see–thank you!

Certainly makes the boo-boo feel better! :wink: