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From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: net.puzzle
Subject: Re: Derivative of x! and actual interviews
Message-ID: <1041@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Apr-85 10:22:55 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.1041
Posted: Mon Apr 15 10:22:55 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Apr-85 11:31:11 EST
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Organization: Duke U Comp Ctr
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In a recent posting, Doug Gwyn writes (in reference to test questions):

> I am somewhat bitter about this since in a college board physics
> test I found myself torn between providing the correct answers to
> questions about relativity (my specialty) or the answers that they
> obviously wanted.  And there have been a few recent cases
> of high school students challenging SAT questions when the
> students found better answers than the expected ones.  When I
> was in high school I found myself in demand for competitions
> and got to be quite good at puzzling out the thinking of the
> testers -- not the ability the testing was intended to test!

Well said!!  I have had similar experiences.  My SAT scores were
astronomical, and some of my CLEP scores were literally off the scale.
I would dearly love to think this reflects my genius, but the truth is I
simply have a knack for test taking, and I understand the techniques
involved in "beating" the test.  (For example, on one CLEP exam in a
field with which I was totally unfamiliar, my preparation consisted of
borrowing a standard text and (the night before, so it was fresh in my
memory) reading the glossary and the chapter summaries.  Reading the
glossary alone would have been sufficient for a decent score.)

A former editor of GAMES magazine has written a book on test taking
called "How to Beat the SAT" or something.  He took the SAT and received
a respectable score without even looking at the questions (just the
answers).  Example:

a) 1.04  b) 10.5  c) 1.05  d) 2.1  e) 7.9

The correct answer is probably (c), since a, b, and d look like attempts
to catch probable erroneous answers (one off, off by multiple of 10 or
2).  Some brighter test constructors have learned to deal with this, but
there are some problems in designing multiple-choice tests that make
them of dubious value as a reliable instrument.  That doesn't stand in
the way of a powerful and wealthy testing mafia, however.

Several years ago a friend of mine was called in on the case of an
elementary school girl whose parents had been told the child needed help
in reading.  My friend discovered rapidly that the girl read quite well.
She was doing poorly because her remedial reading class was a crashing
bore.  She was put into a remedial group due to her poor showing on the
California Achievement Test (CAT).  Despite the efforts of my friend
(who has two masters degrees in fields directly related to the problem)
and a PhD educational psychologist (whose evaluation of the child
indicated an above average talent in both reading and math), the child
was kept in remedial reading classes.  One school official involved in
this bastardly decision justified it by appealing to the CAT as the
final authority.  "If it's not a good test," he demanded to know, "why
are we paying so much for it?"  Why, indeed.

Here at Duke we have a so-called Talent Identification Program which
involves selecting young students on the basis of SAT scores.  Responding
to criticism that even the Education Testing Service (which writes the
SAT) questions its validity in this application, the head honcho of the
project claimed an astronomical accuracy rate of better than 99% (and
this was not an off-the-cuff remark, but something in a published
paper I have a copy of).  Actually, I think the SATs in this instance do
indicate something:  they indicate that said head honcho belongs in a
home.

Even ETS carefully avoids claiming that the SAT is a reliable means of
evaluating individuals (as opposed to groups), and their claims even
there are restricted to predictions of freshman year performance (when
students in many institutions are taking mass courses graded by - guess
what - multiple choice tests).  I mentioned these facts to several other
folks here and was told I was nuts, that there HAD to be more to it than
that.  Fortunately I was able to give them copies of an article in
SCIENCE that detailed the modest claims ETS makes for SAT.  In fact,
when Ralph Nader's organization published an expose of the SAT, ETS's
reponse was to pooh-pooh the report and claim, "We've been saying that
all along."

Sorry to rant and rave so long, but this whole issue tends to make me
foam at the mouth!

-- 
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC  27706
(919) 684-3695
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