What I would add on my own is that US testing often has a particularly nasty quality of artificially induced stress through taut timing. That is, scholastic 'aptitude' test measure how fast a person can work through relatively simple multiple choice problems in an artificially fixet period of time. People with anxiety disorders do miserably on such tests, even though their 'scholastic aptitude" may be high.
Furthermore, the purpose of most 'aptitude' testing is to provide a pseudo-scientific excuse to deny someone access to education or services - not to diagnose anything. Gould made that point quite clearly in his book, when he discussed the orogins of the Stanford-Binet IQ test. This, however, does not mean that all testing falls into this category. There is a number of tests used in special education designed to diagnose specific type of learning disability and to provide appropriate services.
In sum, standardized testing sucks because it is used to manufacture excuses for political decisions, and because it is a money-making business in the US. However, there ia also plenty of good testing designed to actually help people.
Wojtek
On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> "shrill.polemic" wrote:
> >
> > Wojtek, this is silly. Do you really think anyone who fairs badly on
> > standardized test is a criminal? Please.
>
> My experience with weakened vision and what it does both to reading and
> writing has convinced me that tests or other jugments grounded in either
> reading or writng can not only fail to judge the person's intelligence
> knowledge of the material being texted BUT ALSO fail to judge accurately
> that person's command of language. To put it crudely, it is not
> impossible that the author of the Iliad would have flunked freshman comp
> course, being unable to express himself in writing.
>
> (Note, I say _possible_: I give it merely as a clarifying image.)
>
> That is, persons with a powerful intellect, a powerful expressive
> capacity in oral form, may be simply unable to write decent English. (I
> knew one such person years ago: a student in an intro to lit class who
> clearly had the best command of english, the greatest reading capacity,
> of anyone in the class, but sho simply could not get a complete sentence
> down on paper. He could read but not write, though he culd speak in
> paragraphs that were perfectly coherent and expressed in complex, well
> thought-out sentences.)
>
> Anyone who thinks testing is an accurate guide to judgment of people,
> either socially or intellectually, is a good deal more than silly .
>
> Carrol
>
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