This page ©2001
Chip Brown.

Testeses

No this isn't an article about the male anatomy.

It has been brought to my attention that our Union County School System historically doesn't do very well on standardized tests. We can certainly make the claim that we are better one year than the previous. However, when running a marathon it hardly differs whether one finishes 100th or 103rd. Unless you're in the top five nobody stands on the street and hands you water as you go by. No, by the time you come along the crowd has moved on and the only roadside water is a homeless person urinating on a dumpster.

So I have been asked to give my advice on how we can better our scores. Well, it's not so much that I was asked as I just decided to give it.

I say, instead of wasting our time trying to teach morons to read and write, we should just teach them to cheat. The fact that we're doing awful doesn't so much tell me our teachers are bad, but more that our students aren't very creative.

What's the deal today? Have kids forgotten how to cheat on tests? Are kids so lazy they can't write a few notes on their arms? The fact that we're doing lousy on our tests tell me that somewhere along the roads our kids never learned to cheat.

Many kids will give you the, "I don't believe in cheating." These kids can usually be found sitting at home on Saturday night studying. Hey, if I studied I wouldn't be in favor of cheating either. That's the whole point! We either study or we cheat on the test, failure should never be an option.

Other kids are just not adventurous enough. They're afraid of getting caught. I can understand this myself, if I had gotten caught cheating my mother would have tanned my hide. I can honestly say I never wrote cheat notes on my arm. I wrote them on paper and slid them in the seat beside the girl in front of me. That way, I could lean forward and read my notes and if the teacher found them the girl in front of me would get a big fat zero, not me.

There is no reason for our kids to be failing tests! These are the same kids that can smoke a cigarette with their parents in the next room, yet they can't figure how to cheat on tests. What are they learning in our schools?

But I think all this standardized testing is a big racket anyway. I can't remember what I made on any of them. Not once has a perspective employer asked me what I scored on the ASVAB test.

I think these tests were conceived either by the Number 2 Pencil Company or the corporation that created the Grade-A-Tron automatic test scoring machine. If the standardized tests go away, the need for both of these items will become as extinct as the dodo bird.

After looking at a TCAP test I have a feeling this test was created by the Parker Brothers board game company. I had seen harder questions playing a game of Trivial Pursuit. One question was, "Who created the first banking system?" Pretty good question I thought. But along about page three the question guy had ran out of steam. Question 51a was, "Who played the Skipper on Gilligan's Island?"

Then there were the reading comprehension tests. Remember those? They're the tests that give you a paragraph and ask you a question about it.

Example:
Little Jimmy was walking along the road one day when he found a little bird. The bird had a broken wing, and Jimmy wanted to help. Jimmy took the bird to a veterinarian, who examined the bird. Jimmy was told it would cost many dollars to save the bird. Jimmy did not have many dollars so he decided to take the bird home. Little Jimmy's cat ate the bird.

Question:
The concept of this paragraph was...

1. Little Jimmy was a good boy.
2. Little Jimmy was poor.
3. Little Jimmy was not very dependable.
4. The author couldn't get a job writing on a bathroom wall.

Then there were the questions even I never understood. They had a combination of numbers and letters and always asked what "Y" is. Like 3y+5=20, what is Y? I always put Y is the 20th letter of the English alphabet, but each time I was counted as wrong. This leads me to wonder just how accurate the scoring for these tests are.

Note from Chip's wife:
He's still wrong, Y is the 25th letter not the 20th.

But more than any of the questions on the tests, the one thing I could never figure out was the scoring. I got a 36 on some sort of test and hid it from my mother for a month. Only after the school contacted my mother about a scholarship did I realize that somehow the 36 was good. However, when I drug out my 54 on my physics exam my mother wasn't as pleased. I figured, hey, if she likes that 36 she'll be tickled to death with my 54.

But somehow they grade these standardized tests by giving kids one point for every correct question. For ever incorrect question the subtract 2 3/8 point. Then they take the total and multiply by the kid's body weight then subtract the zip code.

Now my point is this (and I do have one). Granted kids are too lazy to cheat these days, but why do we let people who can't calculate grades correctly determine how stupid our kids are? One only has to go to McDonalds and watch them work to decide that for themselves.

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