From: rdyarrow@elnet.com Message-Id: Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1999 17:37:09 -0600 To: "ClearingHouse" Subject: [education-consumers] Illinois ISAT tests Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Reply-To: rdyarrow@elnet.com Precedence: bulk Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mail1.halcyon.com id PAA18852 Status: ===================================================================== Last week I recorded my daughter's observations after taking the new Illinois State Test, otherwise known as the ISAT. I have pasted all three postings here so that those of you who are interested can get a student's per spective. Mary Date: Mon, 01 Feb 1999 23:23:11 -0600 To: rdyarrow@elnet.com My daughter has agreed to tell me about her impressions of the new ISAT tests that are being given around the state this week. On this first day all of the eighth grade students in her class took the new reading test. Sin ce she is an accomplished reader who could knock off almost any high school reading material, keep in mind that her opinions reflect that perspective. 1. She was amused that the teacher first told the class that the test contained a spelling error. The word "log" was written as "hog." The teacher made some comment about how the state should be able to write a test with a ll of the words spelled correctly. My daughter said she wanted to tell the teacher that the "state" doesn't write the test - some people write the test. Fortunately, she said nothing, but I mentally noted that her desire t o wisecrack probably comes from her mother. 2. Although my daughter has never missed a question on any reading achievement test that she has taken during all of her school years, she said that she wasn't sure about how we ll she did on this test. She found the questions asking for her opinions about the fictional story confusing. When I asked her to give me an example of such a question, she said that there was one phrased something like, " Do you think the rich man asked this because ,,,(choices)...?" She said that she found herself wondering if her 3. The reading test was comprised of two stories. My daughter said that the second story seemed to be somethin g that was "on the mark" for eighth graders to read, and she thought the questions were written well. This story was a science article about vision (monocular, etc.) and one had to read and understand the concepts describe d in the story in order to answer the questio ns. She 4. The first story was another matter. She described the story as having "no point" and thought that possibly it was chosen because someone thought it was supposed to be funny or something. Her description of what she remembered about the story was as follows: "This was a story about a poor guy and a rich guy. The poor guy would stand outside of the rich man's house and inhale the smell of the rich man'sfood and laugh with delight. The rich man was greedy because the poor man was healthier and because of t 5. Students were required to write an essay answering a question worded something like this about the second story: "How did the author develop the view t hat laughter is wealth."I think that tomorrow she will take the math test which they spent last week prepping for. The students have been told to use their calculators, and I can't help but wonder how anyone will be able to assess whether these students can work problems with decimals, when the calculator does it for them. jI know that fifth graders use the calculators, but do the third graders? Mary DAY 2 As per my daughter's account, Day Two of the eighth grade ISAT was spent finishing the third section of the reading test and writing a persuasive essay for the writing test. The third story on today's ISAT was about Susan B. Anthony. My daughter had no sense about the reading level, but she once again said she was bothered by questions that asked her opinion and which seemed to have more than one right answer. Today she gave a specific desc ription. One question that bothered her went something like this: "Once again she had to write an essay question about the story in addition to answering questions. Today's questions asked students to describe how the role of women in Susan B. Anthony's time was different from their role now. ALthough the story had discussed that topic, I think that this question provides a good example of how a student can answer a performance assess ment questionThe writing question for the persuasive writing was nondescript: "Should children be required to take a gym/health class." DAY THREE Today my daughter told me that her class took the math test which was given in two sections. Section one was all multiple choice which my daughter said was very similar to the math achievement test which she just took a fe w weeks ago for entrance to the Catholic High School which she hopes to attend. I think that all of the Catholic schools take this same rigorous math test to determine entrance. She said that she thought the level of diffi culty was pretty much the same; the only difference was that the maKnowing that I don't like her to use the calculator, she explained that this test would be impossible to do without one, because there isn't enough time to do the calculations. Although she is a fast calculator without the machine and the private school she attended until this year did not allow this rampant calculator use, she said that the only way to hope to fin ish this test wasThe second part of the test seemed to last too long and most of the students had a fair amount of extra time on their hands. Part of this portion was multiple choice and part was the Performance Assessmen t question. Before they took the test, my daughter's teacher told her that the people who grade the Performance Assessment part of the exam work in the basement of a mall and get paid a lot of money to score the tests. She explained that they go through a lot of training and that every so often their work The performance assessment questions explained that the Good Happy Burger People said that 5% of people in the United States eat in their restaurant. Information was then provided on how many million people lived in the United States. Information was also provided on how many of restaurants the chain had in the United States. The students were asked whether they thought that the Ha DAY FOUR Now that she is finished taking the entire ISAT my daughter summed up her final impression of the new test with this conclusion: " It had good hard multiple choice math problems. That math test is tough, but they need to f igure out better times. The reading section is a 'piece of crap' (mother grimaced here and we discussed word selection) and who knows about the writing. I don't think it is worth having these scores go to my high school ba sed on something someone thought grading this test in the basement Today was the third part of my daughter's math test and the last part of the writing test. The math was once again part multiple choice and part performanc e assessment. Most of her friends once again were not able to solve all of the problems in the allotted time and she couldn't imagine finishing the test without a calculator because of the time press. She found he rself wondering After figuring out the two calculations, the eighth graders were asked to decide which chart Billy should rely upon to plan for college. My daughter said that she chose the one with higher numbers because it's better to overprepare. She wrote her answer explaining that choice. She couldn't remember why she believed that there was no "wrong" answer, but her impression was that if you defended your position, then you earned p oints and the cho ice you selected did not matter. The final ISAT component was the last section of the writing exam. The eighth graders were asked to choose one of two topics. The first topic was expository writing: "Write on a place you would like to go on a vacation." The second topic was narrative writing: "Tell about a time when you changed your mind about something." Examples of topics for the narrative writing were suggested including - changed mind about food, changed mind about a decision) The questions were not exactly phrased like these since my She said that before they took the test the teacher reminded them that they did not have to be factually accurate and cou ld make up stuff for whatever question they chose. All of my daughter's friends wrote about vacations that they had already taken. One of them later said that she couldn't write about a place she had never gone to because she wouldn't know that she wanted to go t Mary Comments on ISAT from rdyarrow@elnet.com >> my comments WA residents, note that the WASL suffers from similar problems, as do tests in every other state, they all follow Marc Tucker's New Standards / America's Choice model for assessment. ===================================================================== My daughter has agreed to tell me about her impressions of the new ISAT tests that are being given around the state this week.s follows: "This was a story about a poor guy and a rich guy. The poor guy would stand outside of the rich man's house and inhale the smell of the rich man'sfood and laugh with delight. The rich man was greedy because the poor man was healthier and because of t 5. Students were required to write an essay answering a question worded something like this about the second story: "How did the author develop the view t hat laughter is wealth."I >>This might be some of that affective attitude pc testing we've heard about. think that tomorrow she will take the math test which they spent last week prepping for. The students have been told to use their calculators, and I can't help but wonder how anyone will be able to assess whether these students can work problems with decimals, when the calculator does it for them. jI know that fifth graders use the calculators, but do the third graders? Mary >> In theory, 4th graders least on WA bechmarks are not to be assessed on decimals, of course several problem in the sample test have decimals. Some 4th grade tests like the MA one require so much computation that there's a significant chance of number entry error even with a calculator. >>The third story on today's ISAT was about Susan B. Anthony. My daughter had no sense about the reading level, but she once again said she was bothered by questions that asked her opinion and which seemed to have more than one right answer. >> This kind of stuff killed California's CLAS, maybe you can do the same to ISAT. WASL does not seem to have much in affective questions. The writing question for the persuasive writing was nondescript: "Should children be required to take a gym/health class." >> Now who gets to set the passing score on something like this?? What determines who is equal, better or worse than "expected" for 8th graders, especially when often the rubrics do _not_ check for spelling, punctuation or grammar? DAY THREE Today my daughter told me that her class took the math test which was given in two sections. Section one was all multiple choice which my daughter said was very similar to the math achievement test which she just took a fe w weeks ago for entrance to the Catholic High School which she hopes to attend. I think that all of the Catholic schools take this same rigorous math test to determine entrance. She said that she thought the level of diffi culty was pretty much the same; >> Why the heck are they using a test designed to weed out the top 25% as the standard for _all_ 8th graders? the only difference was that the maKnowing that I don't like her to use the calculator, she explained that this test would be impossible to do without one, because there isn't enough time to do the calculations. Although she is a fast calculator without the machine and the private school she attended until this year did not allow this rampant calculator use, she said that the only way to hope to fin ish this test was daughter's teacher told her that the people who grade the Performance Assessment part of the exam work in the basement of a mall and get paid a lot of money to score the tests. >> Based on what I heard for WASL, these are the same sort of people that HR Block hire to do tax returns seasonally, and they're paid much less than teachers. (we know about teacher pay) She explained that they go through a lot of training and that every so often their work >> Subjective scorers can disagree as much as 80% of the time, which is 20% on a one point scale for WASL even if they are "adjacent". This is "accuracy". There is no error on a multiple choice question. good hard multiple choice math problems. That math test is tough, but they need to f igure out better times. The reading section is a 'piece of crap' (mother grimaced here and we discussed word selection) and who knows about the writing. I don't think it is worth having these scores go to my high school ba sed on something someone thought grading this test in the basement Today was the third part of my daughter's math test and the last part of the writing test. The math was once again part multiple choice and part performanc e assessment. Most of her friends once again were not able to solve all of the problems in the allotted time and she couldn't imagine finishing the test without a calculator because of the time press. >> Typical of tests that are designed to fail most of the population, where such questions would be thrown out of a norm-referenced test whose purpose is to measure achievement, not "raise the bar". After figuring out the two calculations, the eighth graders were asked to decide which chart Billy should rely upon to plan for college. My daughter said that she chose the one with higher numbers because it's better to overprepare. She wrote her answer explaining that choice. She couldn't remember why she believed that there was no "wrong" answer, but her impression was that if you defended your position, then you earned p oints and the cho ice you selected did not matter. >> Typical NTCM math thinking. Anybody with a bs answer gets full credit. A right answer with no explanation gets no credit. The final ISAT component was the last section of the writing exam. The eighth graders were asked to choose one of two topics. The first topic was expository writing: "Write on a place you would like to go on a vacation." The second topic was narrative writing: "Tell about a time when you changed your mind about something." Examples of topics for the narrative writing were suggested including - changed mind about food, changed mind about a decision) The questions were not exactly phrased like these since my She said that before they took the test the teacher reminded them that they did not have to be factually accurate and cou ld make up stuff for whatever question they chose. All of my daughter's friends wrote about vacations that they had already taken. One of them later said that she couldn't write about a place she had never gone to because she wouldn't know that she wanted to go t Mary >> These questions about your own life or aspirations are really, really discriminatory. A rich white kid would write about going to Paris. A poor black kid would be lucky to write about a trip to a state park. Other typical questions I've seen is to write about a person you admire, or your own parents. What if your dad is Bill Clinton? What if you don't have a dad, and your mom is on welfare and no job? You're not even being tested on the same question since the answer varies with the kid, or who can dream up the most outlandish story.