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Thanks Eric -
I liken standardized tests to the little story of the person who dropped their keys in a parking lot at night in one spot, but only looks in a different spot because that is where the streetlight is. In other words, it is impossible to assess learning in any but the most hopelessly inadequate and inaccurate way, by shining little flashlights on little bits of learning from a single point of view, but not on all of learning from all points of view. I have no problem with testing, but we act like its the only tool in the shed, and then we go on to use it do everything. We make a single numerical judgement about one of the most complex things in the universe, the human brain. 

The dirty little secret is that high stakes tests are used not  because they can provide a way to assess and compare learning, but because they are cheap and test makers/graders can be lazy and/or machine automate grading so they don't have to work hard. Really assessing learning is very hard to do (I do authentic assessment with my grad students and its A LOT of work), and I'm not even sure if we understand it enough to know what we are doing. The Law of Requisite Variety succinctly states that you cannot understand a system that is more complex than your knowledge of it. Complex measures are needed to assess a complex thing, and it is irreducible to a numerical score. We've been looking for our keys in all the wrong places. I don't fault PISA, SAT, ACT, Regents or any other tests, it is their misuse as high stakes determinants for how we classify people in society that is the problem. It is tantamount to a caste system. Do I sound like Ivan Illich yet? If not, then let me propose that we put a moratorium on high stakes testing and put the money we now spend on it into a new kind of neurocognitive learning research. Once we have achieved a deep and complete understanding of what learning is, then we might be qualified to devise metrics and assessments to test it. I would venture to guess that it would not look very much like the tests we currently administer. 

Stephen Miles Uzzo, PhD.
VP, Science & Technology
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111th Street
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, NY 11368 USA
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On Mar 22, 2013, at 12:02 AM, Eric Siegel wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
> 
> which in turn reminds me of the joke about the scientist doing an experiment on spiders...a bit morbid so you spider lovers may want to stop here.
> 
> This scientist is exploring spider mobility.  He takes off one leg from a spider and yells "WALK"
> and the spider limps along easily
> A second leg is removed and the scientist yells "WALK"
> with a bit more trouble the spider is able to walk
> Five more legs come off each in succession, and after each command to WALK the spider limps along more and more feebly
> Finally with all his legs removed, the scientist yells WALK at the spider and the spider just sits there.
> The scientist notes in his notebook "spiders with all their legs removed lose their hearing."
> 
> A post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy joke, confusing correlation with causality.
> 
> Its late...
> 
> Eric
>> 
>> at examples of PISA items here: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/38709385.pdf
>> 
>> The format suggests to me that you can find answers to these questions without having been taught them in school. The developers of PISA items try to ensure that they are not dependent upon a particular curriculum by providing sufficient context within the question to find the answer, so the answers do not depend on factual recall. 
>> Incidentally, the last spider I saw had three legs. It was having difficulty not walking in circles.
>> ]
> 
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