Standardised Testing: The Crack in the Education System Through Which I Slipped

There is this hilarious (or at least I think it's hilarious) piece from the New Yorker about standardised testing. I don't know how big the problem is in the states to be quite honest but it's been the only form of evaluation that we, here in Indonesia, have known since forever it seems. And if that's not a problem on its own then shoot me in the face.

Seriously though. It's atrocious.

The piece is a quiz about standardised testing, what better way to point out how ridiculous something is by writing it in the very form that's being ridiculed right? It's so meta a time hole is probably opening up in the cyber dimension as we speak. But also, some of the answers to the question (which are inscribed just under the actual multiple choiced questions) you may find to be very informative. So will you look at that? Satire and information for the masses.

The scoring key to the test reads:

Zero correct answers: Bummer.One to three correct answers: Slightly less of a bummer.Four to six correct answers: Cool.Seven to nine correct answers: Nice!Ten to eleven correct answers: You really ought to spend more time outside

My favourite of the 10 question quiz (plus 1 bonus question) include:

5. What did President Dwight Eisenhower refer to as “a terrible thing to do to the American people”?

(a) A.C.T.s.
(b) Nuclear testing.
(c) TELEVISION’S QUIZ-SHOW SCANDALS.
(d) Grade inflation.

[Answer: (c); the nineteen-fifties national outrage involved several conspiracies to provide contestants with correct answers to questions ahead of time. It led to congressional hearings, an amendment to the Communications Act of 1964, and a 1994 Robert Redford-directed feature film.]

8. No. 2 pencils were required for most standardized-exam takers after the 1938 introduction of the IBM 805 test-scoring machine, which detected the electrical current flowing through graphite markings. The continued use of pencils today, however, is a historical holdover, unnecessary for what reason?

(a) Optical Mark Recognition (O.M.R.) technology, which, since the nineteen-sixites, has been able to recognize marks made by pens and pencils alike.
(b) Wait… what?
(c) We haven’t needed No. 2 pencils for more than four decades?
(d) WTF, Mrs. Pearlstone?!?!

[Answer: (a); but we hear you.]

And my favourite...

10. Please review the following passage before answering the subsequent reading-comprehension question:

Located in Teachers College Hall at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Oscar K. Buros Library is a specialized reference library containing publications of the Buros Institute, and what is generally regarded as the world’s largest collection of tests and testing materials. Besides copies of nearly every commercially available test published since 1930, the library also contains a large collection of journals, abstracts, reviews and published information dedicated to the field of measurement.

—The Oskar K. Buros Library of Mental Measurements

The primary purpose of the passage is to:

(a) Convince doubters that there is a field known as mental measurements.
(b) Convince scholars to visit Teachers College Hall.
(c) Convince anyone to visit Lincoln, Neb.
(d) Brag a little.

[Answer: (a), (b), (c), or (d); because, really, who are any of us to say what the author really had in mind?]