PSAT Test (Day 40)

Today is PSAT day across America. In the district whose calendar we're following, there is only the test and breaks today, with no periods or classes at all. Therefore there is no worksheet to post today.

The only thing I'll quote from last year is my annual Metric Week announcement:

And as I wrote earlier, it's also Metric Week. This reminds me of what I was writing  about the U of Chicago Transition Math text. If we had been following that text instead of the Geometry text, then yesterday (Day 39) we'd be in Lesson 3-9, "Measuring Volume." This is part of Chapter 3 of the text, "Measurement." The emphasis is not on the volumes of prisms or cylinders (which appear later in Lesson 12-7), but on cubic units. Metric units are taught in Lesson 3-4 and continue to appear throughout the chapter, including liters in Lesson 3-9.

This means that the text is set up perfectly to teach the metric lessons of Chapter 3 near Metric Week, and teach the circle lessons of Chapter 12 near Pi Day!

Oh, and this is a great time to segue into today's traditionalists topic. Last year on PSAT day, I didn't have another traditionalists post -- instead I just read our side-along reading book. But this year we've already finished side-along reading book, so we can have a traditionalists post instead. In fact, I'd like to establish a new tradition -- on PSAT day, I'll write about the PSAT, SAT, and other standardized tests for college admissions.

Here in California, the SAT was recently in the news:

https://edsource.org/2018/gov-brown-vetoes-bill-to-let-districts-give-sat-or-act-as-11th-grade-test/603058

With the advice of his longtime education adviser, Michael Kirst, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation Friday that would give school districts the option of replacing the state’s 11th-grade standardized test with the college admissions tests, the SAT or the ACT.

Let's explain what this is all about. We know that under the Common Core, different states might give the SBAC or PARCC as an end-of-year test for Grades 3-8 and 11. But a few states, including Maine, Connecticut, and Illinois, give the SAT as an end-of-year test instead for juniors. It was proposed that California join these states in giving the SAT or ACT instead of the SBAC. But Governor Brown opposed the bill, and ultimately vetoed it.

In the past, I've agreed with the idea of replacing SBAC with the SAT. Indeed, I agree with much of the following paragraph:

Organizations representing the California school boards and administrators, plus more than two dozen school districts, supported the bill. Many of the districts already offer either the SAT or ACT, or both, at district expense, to all juniors as a way to encourage more students to pursue college. They argue that their students take the college readiness tests, which many colleges use as a factor for admissions, more seriously than the state’s standardized tests in math and English language arts. They say the six-hour Smarter Balanced tests are duplicative and students largely view them as personally irrelevant.

In vetoing the bill, Brown states that he'd prefer going in the opposite direction. Instead of replacing the SBAC with the SAT, colleges should replace the SAT with the SBAC as an admissions test.

Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell, the author of the SAT bill, counters that the SBAC creates a gap of two years when no state test is given (Grades 9-10). Today, students in Grades 8-11 took either the PSAT 8/9 or the PSAT/NMSQT (that is, PSAT 10/11), so those tests fit neatly in the gap.

Let's look at some of the comments made at the above link:

Wayne Bishop:
“They say the six-hour Smarter Balanced tests are duplicative and students largely view them as personally irrelevant.”

And they are correct. Gov. Moonbeam really screwed up this one.

Notice that Wayne Bishop is a traditionalist -- I quoted him in my July 22nd post. Then, he criticized the SBAC for not including rational expressions -- that is, for not being rigorous enough. Thus when he writes "students largely view them as personally irrelevant," he mainly means smart students view the SBAC as irrelevant because they find them too easy. The SAT contains only a few questions on rational expressions (as part of "Passport to Advanced Math"), but even a few such questions is more than the SBAC's none.

In this case, Bishop and I are on the same side. There are many reasons that students might find the SBAC irrelevant, and this is one. On the other hand, Bill Conrad and I surely aren't on the same side:

Bill Conrad:

It is not at all surprising that the many of the professionals in the K-12 system now oppose the SBAC assessment system as a measure of how well students demonstrate their knowledge of the Common Core State Standards. Look at the results for 11th grade. They are so low especially for economically disadvantaged, children of color, students with disabillity, and English Learners!

The poor results are a reflection of the inability of the professionals to prepare high school students for college and career. There are other measures as well that corroborate these results including the fact that 40% of students entering the Cal State College system require remediation. Yet the adults want to blame the victims saying that they are not motivated to take the test. I am sure though if the adults were interested they could convince the children to try and do their best. The reality of the matter is that the adults poison the well by reminding the students that the test is a waste of time in the eyes of the adults!

Here's the thing -- for one reason or another, there are students who are unmotivated to work. When they are given an assignment, they don't even try to answer Question #1. If it's a multiple choice test, they might just bubble in random answers just to say they're done.

Yet here Conrad says it's the teachers' fault if students are unmotivated to do the work. As a teacher (well, a former teacher and hopefully a future teacher), I can't let him make that claim unopposed. It is often said that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Even the best teacher in the world can't make unmotivated students do tasks that they find boring, such as a bubble-in test.

Many younger students, such as third graders (the youngest SBAC grade), are willing to do things simply because the teacher tells them to. But older students, such as juniors (the oldest SBAC grade), won't do things just because the teacher tells them to. This is why juniors won't work hard to get as many SBAC questions correct as third graders would.

For juniors, they must be given a reason to excel on a test. For the SAT, there's a strong reason to succeed -- so that they can get into college. For the SBAC, there's no such reason -- and in many cases, the juniors are too busy trying to prepare for the SAT to want to make an effort on the SBAC.

Conrad tells us that teachers fear accountability. Even those he doesn't mention it in this post, those who wish to enforce teacher accountability regularly suggest that standardized test scores be included in teacher evaluations.

Conrad fears false positives -- a teacher who is evaluated as "good" yet has low test scores. I, as usual, fear false negatives -- a teacher who is evaluated as "bad" yet has smart juniors who could score high if they want to, but they don't.

And so to anyone who proposes including test scores in teacher evaluations, I recommend that any such test scores should be included as an equal part of the students' grades. That is, whatever percentage of the teacher's evaluation the test scores are, that's what percentage of the students' grades the test scores should be. If test scores are 10% of the teacher's evaluation, then they need to be 10% of the students' grade. If test scores are 50% of the teacher's evaluation, then they need to be 50% of the students' grade, and so on. Now the juniors have an incentive to do well on the test.

According to Conrad, a good teacher is one whose students get high test scores. This means that motivating potential high scorers to work hard is of a particular concern -- and thus Wayne Bishop's concerns come into play.

Some traditionalists suggest that the SBAC should contain Calculus. I disagree -- after all, their recommended timetable is senior-year Calculus, yet the SBAC is a junior-year test. To make the timetable match up, the SBAC should contain Pre-Calculus, not Calculus. And besides, there's already a standardized test for Calculus -- the AP Calculus test. So once again, it's Pre-Calc that should bridge the gap between Common Core and the AP.

Traditionalists often point out that the highest scores, 4 (SBAC) and 5 (PARCC), correspond to "can pass a college Algebra course." Thus we can add new scores, such as 6 for "can pass a college Calculus course" and 7 for "can pass a high school Calculus course." In order to earn a 7, students must be prepared for senior-year Calculus -- and so as juniors, they need to be good at Pre-Calc. So Pre-Calc questions on a new SBAC can separate the 6's from the 7's.

And so if Governor Brown (or his successor, who will be elected next month) wishes to expand the SBAC into a college-based test, then these are the changes that should be made to the SBAC. The only other change would be, while eighth grade Algebra I shouldn't be required, neither should it be hindered by the need to know some geometry for the eighth grade SBAC. Therefore, eighth graders in Algebra I shouldn't have to take the SBAC (just as freshmen and sophomores in Algebra I don't have to take the SBAC).

There's one more point from the article that I'd like to add:

More than 1,000 colleges, most of them small, liberal arts schools, have decided to make the SAT and ACT optional, relying instead on grades and other factors. They say the tests are an obstacle for minority and poor students, who may be unaware that fees are waived for low-income students, and that the tests favor wealthy students who can afford to pay for test-prep courses and to take the tests multiple times. Research released this year found that taking the test a second time raises scores by an average of 90 points out of the 2,400-point scale.

By the way, the most prestigious school that has dropped the SAT requirement is the U of Chicago -- the university I mention the most often on this blog because our Geometry text was developed there.

The FairTest website is opposed to all standardized tests, including both SAT/ACT-type tests as well as SBAC/PARCC-type tests. Someone who agrees with FairTest might oppose the bill. They don't want SBAC replaced with SAT -- instead they want SBAC replaced with nothing.

I'd counter by saying that the perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good. If the SBAC and SAT are both bad tests, then replacing SBAC with SAT means replacing two bad tests with one (since SBAC students who are college-bound must take SAT too). The feds won't let states give zero bad tests, and so one is closer to the ideal than two.

And moreover, the SAT is a three-hour test while SBAC is a six-hour test. Once again, three hours is closer to the FairTest ideal zero than nine hours is. Again, I say that the perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good. Those who want to minimize standardized testing should support the SAT bill, since the bill reduces the number of standardized tests that students take.