> >otherwise it just sounds like "In my day" geezer-ranting.
In MY day, (before the existence of portable calculators) when I took the
PSATs, they allowed, and encouraged, bringing scratch paper, and even
GRAPH paper, but NO slide rules. So, we brought logarithmic graph paper
and folded it. The next year, (when I took the SATs) they stopped having
students bring their own scratch paper.
Our school demonstrated with reasonable statistical significance, that
students who take a LOT of standardized tests score higher on standardized
tests. It really DOES make a difference to pace yourself well, and get
lots of practice at making best guesses. I have students these days who
get bogged down in a single hard problem at the beginning and don't finish
tests, and who leave BLANK multiple guess questions that they aren't sure
of the answer.
> The SATs have, in fact, been dumbed-down. Some relevant URLs:
> http://www.edreform.com/news/sat_scramble.htm
> http://www.heartland.org/education/dec00/recenter.htm
> http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=01sat.h16
They were too easy then!
And now they've further gutted them?!?
Received on Mon Apr 22 2002 - 18:39:38 BST