Word: tested
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...been raised too high? Some teachers and parents complain that the tests are too exhaustive--and exhausting--for young students. The Massachusetts test clocked in at 16 hours, spread over several weeks. Tina Yalen, an eighth-grade civics teacher, gave her opinion of the Virginia test: "Some of it looked like Trivial Pursuit to me." More worrisome is how a 10-year-old will react if his or her result is branded with a scarlet F. Says Harvard's Reville: "An overload of negative feedback runs the risk that students are going to shut down and not make an effort...
Many teachers rave about the high-stakes exams, contending that they have galvanized students. But other teachers find themselves forsaking important lessons simply to "teach for the test." Even in North Carolina, whose soaring scores earned accolades in Clinton's State of the Union address, some teachers tailor upwards of 80% of their lessons to the test, according to a University of North Carolina survey. "Teachers must go way beyond textbook instruction," says Felicita Santiago, principal of a Brooklyn public elementary school, where teachers came in an hour before school to help kids get ready for the exam. "Preparing...
Another problem is the piecemeal way in which these tests are developed, with no attempt to coordinate them nationally. Last month Achieve Inc., a bipartisan resource center on standards, was host to a conference in Washington, where representatives from 20 states pledged to work toward a shared national standard by offering uniform exam questions. In the meantime, students like Lajoi probably have less to worry about than the people in charge of teaching them. The Maryland board of education has just targeted three elementary schools in Prince George's County for state takeover because of poor test results...
That may soon change. America's most relentless examiner, the Educational Testing Service, has developed computer software, known as E-Rater, to evaluate essays on the Graduate Management Admission Test. Administered to 200,000 business school applicants each year, the GMAT includes two 30-min. essays that test takers type straight into a computer. In the past, those essays were graded on a six-point scale by two readers. This month, the computer will replace one of the readers--with the proviso that a second reader will be consulted if the computer and human-reader scores differ by more than...
...verb formulations. "This is all part of a long-term approach to mind as machine," says David Schaafsma, professor of English education at Teachers College of Columbia University. "Writing is a human act, with aesthetic dimensions that computers can only begin to understand." The Kaplan course, a leader in test prep, has taken a more pragmatic approach: it has issued a list of strategies for "the age of the computerized essay." One of its tips: use transitional phrases like "therefore," and the computer just might think you're Dickens...