Standardized tests are a necessary evil, to some degree, and have been around for many, many decades (cough). But in the past decade or so — certainly with the advent of Dubya's "No Child Left Behind" but increasingly amidst a flurry of "school accountability" programs — they have taken on greater and greater importance for state and federal funding, teacher raises and employment, etc.
Which makes reports like the following all the more maddening — Florida's standard science test, which includes not only downright errors, but answers based not on reality but on what the expectation is that kids will have learned in a particular year (i.e., a kid who knows more than grade level is likely to get the answer _wrong).
That's based on the curriculum guide, of course, since nobody can actually see the real sooper-sekrit test, but one presumes the same is true in the actual exam.
Zany, in a tragic way. #ddtb
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Florida standardized science tests are a disaster – Boing Boing
Mark Frauenfelder Cory Doctorow David Pescovitz Xeni Jardin Editors. Rob Beschizza Managing Editor. Maggie Koerth-Baker Science Editor. Jason Weisberger Publisher-at-Large. Ken Snider Sysadmin. Dean P…