News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The $4 Million Teacher. Parent comment

Re:The $4 Million Teacher by cabalamat on Saturday August 03, 2013 @03:43PM (#6153105)
> (b) Damaging the test integrity which is designed to find bright kids, not just "well prepared for this one day" kids.

Either a test is important, or it is not important.

If it is not important, it is a waste of everyone's time and money, and ought to be scrapped.

If it is important, people will obviously try to game it.Therefore all tests should be resistant to gaming: the only way to do well at the test should be to actually be good at whatever the test is trying to measure. If a test doesn't have this proprty, it should also be scrapped, for the reasons you state and also because it is a waste of time and money.

I don't blame Princeton review for bad tests, I blame the people setting the tests.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The $4 Million Teacher by sillysaurus on Saturday August 03, 2013 @06:01PM (#6153588)
Actually, a test falls along a continuum of importances. Some tests are better than others, not merely useless/useful.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The $4 Million Teacher by mathattack on Saturday August 03, 2013 @10:53PM (#6154406)
This is actually very hard, because a test can seem to be unpreparable, but then over time people find a way to prepare. It's very much a moving target.
[ Parent | on HN ]