Comments on: . . . But Arkansas Reading Tests Are Bad

By: Proud Hon

Proud Hon — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:17:09 +0000

Ahh, but my kids have been immersed in summer classes in Marxist humor since before they could walk. Here’s a good one:

A group of workers enter the boss’s office and tell him that they have just taken over the factory. “You can’t”, says the boss. “I own it”
“And how did you come to own it?” asks one of the workers.
“It was left to me by my father”, says the boss.
“How did he get it?” asks the worker.
“He got it from his father”, says the boss.
“And he?” asks the worker.
“From his father”, says the boss.
“And he?” persists the worker.
“He fought for it”, says the capitalist in a burst of familial pride.
“Well”, say the workers, all together this time, “We’ll fight you for it”.

By: DBowen

DBowen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:19:35 +0000

I think what I’m trying to get at is that the skill of reading is really diverse. In evaluating a student’s ability to read critically, really dissect a passage, it would probably be best to incorporate course content areas. However, reading is also a skill that individuals use to acquire new knowledge. For example, If I want to learn about nuclear physics, outside of a classroom setting, then I’m probably going to read-up on the subject. Therefore, in assessing reading skills, students should also be tested in their abilities to process contents/subjects with which they are not so familiar. It would be impossible to find a text that is completely unfamiliar to every student (except maybe a Jabberwocky passage), but there are probably subjects/contents that are unfamiliar to the vast majority of the population (e.g. cricket, 18th century Polish ballet, Marxist humor, etc.).

By: SBuck

SBuck — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:27:12 +0000

But I guess Hirsch would argue that it’s impossible — unless you use nonsense text like Jabberwocky — to come up with a pure “reading” test that doesn’t also effectively measure background knowledge, whether you want it to or not. So because your ability to “read” an essay is always going to be determined largely by your knowledge about the essay’s subject, reading tests might as well be based on subjects that students have studied.

By: DBowen

DBowen — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:26:23 +0000

I’m not certain how beneficial it would be to tie the reading section of a standardized test to standards. I absolutely agree with the point that it at least levels the playing field in that it is more likely to put students on a common ground. However, I always thought that the purpose of assessing a student’s reading comprehension was to determine the extent to to which students can read and then process a passage (regardless of familiarity but obviously still on grade level). If reading passages are tied to curricula, students may be answering questions correctly due to prior content knowledge, meaning that students may obtain high marks based on content knowledge as opposed to actual reading ability. Removing bias, in terms of passage topics, may be difficult but not entirely impossible.

By: BKisida

BKisida — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:52:33 +0000

Nice fish!

By: Boyd Logan

Boyd Logan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:52:58 +0000

I can only speak for the 11th grade test, but they divide the passages up into 3 types for it:

Literary: (short stories or poem, usually).
Content Area: (material from some other content area, most often social studies)
Practical: some text that would be encountered in the “real world.” These could be recipes, instructions, pamphlets, or anything of that nature.

Students get 2 of each of these, for a total of 6 passages on which they’re graded.