Finals and testing
Thank the Goddess. I am finished grading (except for one errant paper, which will be in my email at the crack of dawn tomorrow, right? you know who I mean) and will submit my grades tomorrow morning. And I have completed my term as a juror (there are a couple of big trials going on now that have the courtrooms tied up for the rest of the week, and since one is a double murder, I am most grateful I am not serving on that jury). I am officially free.
Except that I just spent the past half hour remembering the differences between obtuse and actue angles and how to calculate area (thank the Goddess for the internet too). Laura and I just finished studying how many quarts in a gallon and days in a leap year and whatnot as well. Now she’s working on an essay on Harriet Tubman. I hate being in the fourth grade again. The first time was bad enough.
Next week is PACT, the evil South Carolina academic achievement test. I regularly hear our administrators and board members priding themselves about how difficult our test is (generally anytime someone complains about how low our student test scores are). Other states, they always remark, have easier tests, so of course their students score higher—but their scores are fluff. We on the other hand stick by our tough test even though all our schools are failing in the No Child Left Behind standards. That’s intelligent testing for you—test for the sake of it, and make sure it’s hard enough many of our students fail.
My bright and talented and beautiful daughter doesn’t test well, as we gently say about smart people who bomb standardized tests. I feel perfectly comfortable saying this, as I too am one of this ilk. I took the SAT either two or three times and never broke 1100—which doesn’t even approach the “respectable” score one hopes for if you want to be in the big leagues. Fortunately I always thought the big leagues were full of snobs whose great joy in life was thinking they were better than you (grad school has loads of those, I’m sorry to say). And while I never thought I was a genius, I knew I was plenty smart, so it didn’t really scar my ego (although you do notice of course that twenty years later I still remember my SAT scores)—but I sure hate seeing Laura’s test scores. It’s harder seeing hers than my own—I know we’re both getting scored.
Well, I’m not really interested in a diatribe about finals and testing (what! neither are you!?), so I think instead I’ll demonstrate my lesser intellectual state by going to have some popcorn and watch Captain Picard be assimilated. (I bet Captain Picard kicked butt on the Starfleet Academy admissions tests.)
Except that I just spent the past half hour remembering the differences between obtuse and actue angles and how to calculate area (thank the Goddess for the internet too). Laura and I just finished studying how many quarts in a gallon and days in a leap year and whatnot as well. Now she’s working on an essay on Harriet Tubman. I hate being in the fourth grade again. The first time was bad enough.
Next week is PACT, the evil South Carolina academic achievement test. I regularly hear our administrators and board members priding themselves about how difficult our test is (generally anytime someone complains about how low our student test scores are). Other states, they always remark, have easier tests, so of course their students score higher—but their scores are fluff. We on the other hand stick by our tough test even though all our schools are failing in the No Child Left Behind standards. That’s intelligent testing for you—test for the sake of it, and make sure it’s hard enough many of our students fail.
My bright and talented and beautiful daughter doesn’t test well, as we gently say about smart people who bomb standardized tests. I feel perfectly comfortable saying this, as I too am one of this ilk. I took the SAT either two or three times and never broke 1100—which doesn’t even approach the “respectable” score one hopes for if you want to be in the big leagues. Fortunately I always thought the big leagues were full of snobs whose great joy in life was thinking they were better than you (grad school has loads of those, I’m sorry to say). And while I never thought I was a genius, I knew I was plenty smart, so it didn’t really scar my ego (although you do notice of course that twenty years later I still remember my SAT scores)—but I sure hate seeing Laura’s test scores. It’s harder seeing hers than my own—I know we’re both getting scored.
Well, I’m not really interested in a diatribe about finals and testing (what! neither are you!?), so I think instead I’ll demonstrate my lesser intellectual state by going to have some popcorn and watch Captain Picard be assimilated. (I bet Captain Picard kicked butt on the Starfleet Academy admissions tests.)
posted by Lisa at 5/04/2005 08:17:00 PM
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