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The Happy Scientist's blog

The Science FCAT, The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, is Florida's high stakes test that assesses all the science concepts and information that students should have learned by the end of fifth grade. Schools and districts are subject to financial incentives or penalties, depending on their students' FCAT scores, so this is a VERY important test.

A few weeks ago, I started developing FCAT practice questions to help students review concepts and prepare for the test. To develop those questions I used FLDOE's FCAT 2.0 Science Test Item Specifications. These documents are used as:

"a resource that defines the content and format of the test and test items for item writers and reviewers."

I expected the Test Item Specifications to be a tremendous help in writing simulated FCAT questions. What I found was a collection of poorly written examples, multiple-choice questions where one or more of the wrong responses were actually scientifically correct answers, and definitions that ranged from misleading to totally wrong.

[thehappyscientist.com]

Is it any wonder that the US is falling further behind in science education.

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OK who at FSU wrote the FCAT 2.0 Science Test Item Specifications?

FCAT 2.0 Science Test Item Specifications
"The Administrator
Office of Assessment
Florida Department of Education
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0400"


From the looks of it, a committee.

. . . .
An example from a personal annals of 'author and review review review'.

Back in the 1980's I worked on a piece of the SDI project. My part involved a satellite which included a rather large space-based optical instrument.

As a jest, the engineer responsible for writing the assembly procedure added this fillip: "All Optical Assembly must be done in the Nude."

This step went through three reviews in our company, two prime contractor reviews (TRW, I think..), two Air Force Reviews, and one oversight program office review. Everyone missed it.

When the assembly crew received their instructions (which involved clean room assembly), they carefully pointed out the sentence to the one (young, attractive) female member of the assembly crew. She carefully and with an excellent grasp of invective in both English and Swiss German, explained exactly where they could store their sentence. Assembly was done clothed, in violation of written procedure.

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The moral of the story is.. never assume your editors will catch stuff.

"we need to keep in mind what level of understanding 5th graders are expected to know according to the benchmarks. We cannot assume they would receive instruction beyond what the benchmark states. Regarding #1 - While I don't disagree with your science, the benchmarks do not address the hardness or softness of rose petals. We cannot assume that a student who receives instruction on hardness of minerals would make the connection to other materials..."

It's not just Florida and this is nothing new.

I appealed my 7th grade science exams all the way to the school board and got much the same answer. I produced college textbooks and encyclopedia articles to support my answers. The teacher produced a sample exam published by the state. She won.

So is Tennessee:

[hosted.ap.org]

My Sister lives in Houston, Texas. Her kids are going through much of the same thing. It was called the TAKS test or Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, and I believe it is changing to STAR next year. Monetary appropriations for education , just like in florida, are then made based on how the district scores overall. These tests are shameful, and teach to the bare minimum of what our kids need to know to pass. We should do away with standardized testing, and shrink k-12 into k-10. America plays catch-up with the rest of the world during our four years in college. Translation, k-12 is broken and needs fixin'.

What is broken with K-12 is really twofold --

1st - politicians are playing politics with education without having any grasp of what goes into teaching students in real classrooms.

2nd - The US is the only major power commited to educationg 100% of our students to college levels. The nations consatantly being pointed to as superior (Japan, Germany, Korea, etc) identify their brightest students and only those students are prepared for post-secondary education. The rest of the students are prepared for a life vocation. When the scores of our top quartile is compared with those countries, we compared very favoribly to the best of those nations. Until the US is ready to do such a selection process we will always lag far behind. Of course that means some politician being brave enough to tell a group of parents (aka enraged voters) that their little Johnny or Suzy is not a genious and will not be going to MIT on a full tuition waiver despite those "C" grades in math. So that will never happen as long as they can just blame the teacher.

To fully understand how the second principle came to be, go back and rad the first principle.


All that aside - standardize testing is completely out of hand and hasd become a multi-million dollar business with huge campaign donations and lobbiests to see that it is both protected and expanded up.

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You can tell a lot about a woman by her hands...
- For example, if they are wrapped around your throat she's probably slightly upset.

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Ombligo
2nd - The US is the only major power commited to educationg 100% of our students to college levels. The nations consatantly being pointed to as superior (Japan, Germany, Korea, etc) identify their brightest students and only those students are prepared for post-secondary education. The rest of the students are prepared for a life vocation. When the scores of our top quartile is compared with those countries, we compared very favoribly to the best of those nations. Until the US is ready to do such a selection process we will always lag far behind.

That's a pretty provocative statement. You got any backup for these statements (especially the noncomparativeness of the test scores)? I find this very hard to believe.

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"So be proud to be a decent American instead of just a w'anker whipping up fear!" - Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland

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davester

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Ombligo
2nd - The US is the only major power commited to educationg 100% of our students to college levels. The nations consatantly being pointed to as superior (Japan, Germany, Korea, etc) identify their brightest students and only those students are prepared for post-secondary education. The rest of the students are prepared for a life vocation. When the scores of our top quartile is compared with those countries, we compared very favoribly to the best of those nations. Until the US is ready to do such a selection process we will always lag far behind.

That's a pretty provocative statement. You got any backup for these statements (especially the noncomparativeness of the test scores)? I find this very hard to believe.

'Coulda sworn I just debunked that in another thread...