You are not describing a standardized test. However, many teachers do use individualized tests and quizzes tailored to the learning objective of particular classes all the time, it is called summative assessment. But, it is a static assessment. It only proves they knew the material on that occasion. Having them work through a problem backwards like you mention, if it is a math, physics, or chemistry problem is useful to practice the use of formulae though...Topper wrote:Having taught at a Junior College, I have experience issuing tests. I gave quizzes often and then on tests I gave the same problem as on the quiz, but reversed the question and had the students working backwards through the problem. Quizzes gave the students and me feedback on where more work was needed and we could do that in reviews. By having to work through a problem front to back and back to front, you ensure the students understand what they are learning.
My take on reports is that little knowledge is retained, the value is in learning to research and find sources. To this day I maintain my own extensive library for both my chosen professions.
A comment on competition. My 4 yr old son races BMX at our local club. They give out ribbons at the end of each race night to all the kids but 1st (blue), 2nd (red), 3rd (white) and place (green). End of season there are similar trophies. Each kid leaves with something, but competition and placings are honoured. At 3, my guy was happy just to leave the evening race with a ribbon, at 4 he wants that blue ribbon.
Interestingly, a peer of my son's, who's one parents is a teacher, the other a school psychologist/troubled kid councillor, is hauled off home before the ribbons are handed out because they don't believe in competition.
Liberal arts however, requires critical thinking, cultural knowledge and social significance. For that, formative assessment is required. Working on projects, using different skills, learning by inference...
A classic example is a Gr 12 History project using the lyrics in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" to create a book using at least one page per line of song. an awesome song that covers modern western history from Harry Truman to AIDS. It covers all the major social and political themes, and in creating the book (including proper binding) the student not only learns a lot more than revising for a test from a textbook, but also internalizes the information and takes it a step further in creating his or her own opinions and their relationship with the data.
Unfortunately, you cannot easily standardize that kind of assessment, and frankly, John Q Public, is too busy and uninterested in thinking about it anyway. Can you imagine having to pay someone to read every one of those books in all of British Columbia's history courses?....wait...
This is why loaded garbage like the Fraser Institute has followers, everyone can read a league table. we all know what a blue ribbon means...
Provincial Exams and or GCSE exams provide easily digested numbers but in the end its just a blue ribbon...
meaningless. Johnny knew a fact today...
Did you know BTW, that top universities like Oxbridge no longer use high school exams as entrance criteria? They found that it is a poor indicator of a student's potential for success.
1 Provincial Exams have to be dumbed down enough so that the majority of students can pass it, or parents get pissed off and think its the system's fault.
2 Schools knowing that their performance is judged by results plays eligibility games, fast tracking smarter kids and delaying or disqualifying the dummies before hand.
3 Teacher's knowing that their job performance evaluation is at stake, teach to the test, omitting knowledge that they know wont be on the test... Science ten in particular (a provincially examined course) is an issue since the curriculum has Chem, Physics, Biology and Earth Science and not enough classroom hours in a year to cover all four strands effectively. Guess which one typically gets left out?
and finally,
4, students typically forget half the information they put down on the test 5 minutes after leaving the exam hall.