NYT: Asians and School Tests

This New York Times did a fascinating piece on how children of Asian immigrants study very hard in order to do well on school exams in the US. The article describes how the parents will spend money on test prep classes despite working meager jobs, and how such parents will resort to corporal punishment to ensure their children make the grade. These parents logically view such tests as the path to prosperity for their future generations. The article goes on to highlight the Asian children's success brings up uncomfortable debate on why other races can't do well on such tests.

Test prep of reasoning skills alters brain structure

A recently released study by UCLA demonstrates that intensive preparation for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) changes the structure of the brain. The study specifically addressed the ability to improve reasoning skills.  This is good news for future lawyers looking to improve their chances because LSAT scores are derived from three sections: Reading Comprehension, Analytical Reasoning, and Logical Reasoning.

DFMv3 is live!

After 3 years of research and development, Dr. Flowers Test Prep and Logical Steps have launched the next iteration of our test prep platform helping students prepare for the MCAT online - DrFlowersMCAT.com

A big thanks for all of those that worked with us - advisers, students, teachers, parents, consultants, designers, programmers & project managers. Geeze, Lynn, wherever you are, thanks! ASU and SkySong, thanks for being the conduit for much of our premed research.

In this release, we've moved away from a strict individualization of student curriculum and more towards a guided journey to what you need to know. We now let students select which journey they'd like to pursue from Cram Session to Physics Booster. We've reworked thousands of concepts in math, chemistry, biology, physics, verbal reasoning and writing to be compatible mobile devices. We've moved everything to the cloud. We added a massive "question pool". We built support systems and trained resources to grade essays our client's essay according to AAMC's metrics.

The research told us so much. We gave cameras to premed students to photograph and tell their stories of preparing for the MCAT. From this we learned that students have busy and varied lives, and may study anywhere and anytime. We conducted surveys of premed students that revealed weaknesses in our competition. Second hand research and monitoring of what's working in mobile, social media, web 2.0, etc provided the reality check for the underlying platform.

We also learned that there's a lot of good content online. Yet finding it and tracking what you've learned vs what is covered on the MCAT is tedious. And fitting that into a busy schedule means the value of online test prep courses now is how to make efficient use of students' time.

It was amazing studying so many educational theories and trying to fit them together to deliver an effective & coherent experience. This meant we had to iteratively rework the application dozens of times and occasionally have heated debates about which theories should be applied when, where and how. As my friend Waseem once told me, "figuring out what to execute seems to take forever; execution is the easy part."

I learned that performance on standardized exams has more to do with applied knowledge than theoretical knowledge. I feel the same applies to building an elearning system. Now, let's see how we did applying our knowledge in DFMv3.

Sleeping for performance

I stumbled across these two articles on sleep. Both give tips on how to increase performance.

Lying in at the weekend boosts your brain power, study shows

Seven hours sleep is the recipe for health

Research Brief: Optimal Testing Environment

There's new research out from The Principals' Partnership which explores secrets of acing standardized exams. Some of the tips are consistent with what I've documented in other posts on this blog. According to the research, you should:

• Feel good when entering a testing arena, possessing a positive frame of mind
• Think of the tests as exciting challenges, not something to be endured
• Review and discuss the formats regularly prior to the exam
• Use a lot of practice tests and make sure to learn the vocabulary of the instructions
• Periodically, administer timed tests
• Teach specific skills such as: how to read a passage, reading questions before the passage, outlining writing prompts before writing, underlining key words in the test questions and directions, planning the use of time, completing the questions they know first, going with their first answer, answering every question and not allowing themselves to be distracted by others.
• Get a good night’s rest before the test and to allow sufficient time to arrive at the testing locating with time to settle in and get comfy
• Practice deep breathing and counting to ten to help relax
• Dress in layers so that you can keep comfy during the exam
• Eat a good breakfast and bring a snack that is not salty
• Find and study your weaknesses.

Should test prep programs try to teach academic content?

When I read statements like the following, I become distraught about trying to teach students to score better on a test by putting in the hours to learn the content and practice the skills being tested.

According to the $2 billion test-prep industry, performance on the SAT and ACT can be improved with tips and tricks. "We don't pretend to teach students a lot academically," says Ed Carroll, an executive director at The Princeton Review. "Taking tests is a skill that can be developed, like playing a guitar or tennis."

Source: 10 Things College Admissions Tests Don't Do

Stanley H. Kaplan

On August 23, 2009, Stanley H. Kaplan left behind a changed world.

As the founder of the nation's first test preparation company, he built a new global marketplace in standardized test preparation. He started his company from his parents' Brooklyn home in 1938, and it became a chain of more than 100 centers nationally. After selling his business to the Washington Post in 1984, the education business grew to a global giant in the paid-education market. He remained working there until 1994.

He challenged the College Board's position that tutoring won't help prepare students standardized tests. “To say you can’t improve scores is to say you can’t improve students, and I disagree with that,” he told The New York Times in 1979. He convinced the Federal Trade Commission that students could be helped through test prep, and by doing so launched a multi-billion dollar test prep industry.

Mr. Kaplan was rejected from medical school, and yet later tutored thousands of students on the MCAT. In Manhattan the Rita and Stanley H. Kaplan Cancer Center at the New York University Medical Center is a reminder of his impact of this world.

He loved his work. Kaplan spent long nights devising practice SAT questions and finding entertaining ways to teach the Pythagorean theorem.

Mr. Kaplan believed that students should have access to higher education based on their capabilities, not financial backgrounds or connections. Ironically, many students in a recent survey conducted by Logical Steps at Arizona State University found that students perceived Kaplan's courses to be very expensive, but safe. Newsweek wrote the following.

Today SAT prep courses are often viewed as a pricey tool that gives an advantage to upper-middle-class kids in the admissions arms race, but for decades Kaplan's clientele was striving ethnic New Yorkers who hoped higher scores might put them on par with WASPy prep-schoolers and Ivy League legacies. "He challenged society with the notion of meritocracy," said Andy Rosen, Kaplan's current CEO, in his eulogy.

I'm not sure if his company is continuing his belief or just cashing out, but Mr. & Mrs. Kaplan became big philanthropists, and I raise my glass to his legacy.

Chewing Gum Can Improve Test Scores

According to Chris Chatham at ScienceBlogs, "there's ample evidence that chewing gum enhances cognition", although scientists aren't exactly sure why this is the case.

Whatever the case, I say bring some gum to your study sessions and exams!

Follow directions

The NYTimes.com's story, Just Following Orders: An Evil Essay tells the story of how on the SAT, Mr. Schrefer intentionally tried to submit the most evil essay possible crediting Nazis as the "brightest thinkers of our time". He did this while following the instructions which do not include anything about morality. He received scores from two graders, a 5 and a perfect 6, for his essay.

China's National Higher Education Entrance Examination

China's National Higher Education Entrance Examination (中华人民共和国普通高等学校招生全国统一考试) has been described as the "most pressure packed examination in the world". For Chinese students, who under the one child policy are their family's sole future earning potential, this is "a watershed that divides two dramatically different lives". If they score well, they can be accepted to higher education programs and go on to participate in the benefits of China's growth. If they they score poorly, there future is almost certainly to be working at the bottom of a very crowded peasant class. Here are some quick facts about the exam:
- Held annually over 3 days
- Prerequisite for almost all higher education institutions at the undergraduate level
- Usually taken in students' last year of secondary school
- Overall mark is generally a weighted sum of students' marks in different subjects
- Scored on a scale of 100-900 points
- Max score varies wildly from year to year
- Provinces allowed to customize their own examinations
- 3 mandatory subjects are Chinese, mathematics and a foreign language
- A mix of 3 sciences (physic, chemistry, biology) and 3 humanities (history, geography, political education) are taken depending on the programs being applied to
- In 2006, 8.8 million are estimated to have taken the exam
- In 2007, 7 students with overall highest score in their provinces entered Hong Kong's Universities rather than the two major Universities in China.

Standardized exams

Is it just me or have you noticed that standardized exams are like a political football?

In Ohio, a teaching union doesn't feel any love lost if they're less standardized exams in this world. In Romania, teachers banned a standardized test on the Romania language citing issues over recent hiring and firing policy changes by the Education Department. Something similar is happening in Los Angeles too! Might this be because standardized tests can be used to measure teaching performance as well as student performance?

In Arkansas, they're using different scoring strategies between state and national standardized exams. Their national scores keeping struggling while state exam results are skyrocketing. Guess which set of scores local educators point to?

John Taylor Gatto and his latest book "Weapons of Mass Instruction" is leading the charge by education professionals who feel the mere existence of standardized exams leads to teachers teaching to those exams and neglecting other forms of education thus limited our students to becoming standardized drones. And when you read stories like this one in Florida, you can understand his point.

The poor and underrepresented minorities feel that the rich will always score better on such exams thus perpetuating a cycle of poverty.

In Georgia, some people need to do some explaining about allegations on cheating on their standardized tests.

Standardized tests are frequently misrepresented. They can powerful indicators but can be manipulated in the spirit of "lies, damed lies and statistics". Look no further than the recent debate over Sotomayor and the exams used with firemen. On both sides of the issue people are passionate about what the results of the exams really mean and if the exam was even a valid measure.

Yet a serious alternative to standardized test hasn't emerged in the public debate. Whatever the case, standardized exams aren't going away. They're destined to exist as long as there's a need to judge the masses.

A great quote by Randall C. Deike, Vice president for enrollment at Case Western Reserve University who holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology.

"Too often standardized testing is condemned when it's really test misuse that's at issue."

Source: Take Tests Down a Notch, Report Says
Admissions group urges colleges to 'assume control' of debate on testing
Chronicle of Higher Education
By ERIC HOOVER

Insight into school principals and standardized tests

I came across this article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that sheds light into the competitive pressures on schools and their principals in performing well on standardized exams. Ever since No Child Left Behind was implemented, standardized exams have been a key metric in gauging school performances between 3rd and 11th grades. Some scores have risen drastically in a way that statistically points to cheating.

Insight into Reverse Discrimination through Standardized Tests in China

While reading about the ethnic tension that happened last week in Xinjiang China, I read an Associated Press article that stated the following.

A week before the Xinjiang riot, the hottest topic on the Internet — the most freewheeling public forum in China — was outrage over a top-scorer in the ultra-competitive college entrance exam.

The 17-year-old Han Chinese student's family falsely listed him as a minority, entitling him to 20 extra points and giving him a boost in landing places in top schools. The subterfuge, discovered by education officials, cut across notions of fairness in a society that for hundreds of years has seen standardized exams as a channel for merit-based advancement.

While riots and death are definitely horrible and newsworthy, the two paragraphs above caught my eye because, at Dr. Flowers Test Prep, we've reviewed research on how to address stereotype threat - the fear that one's behavior will confirm an existing stereotype of a group with which one identifies and which can affect performance - within standardized tests. In Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, he describes how our unconscious views, may be quite different from our stated views and that these unconscious biases may have in educational performance. At Dr. Flowers Test Prep, we've identified a couple of test preparation techniques involving scaffolding/fading and priming as being strong ways of addressing stereotype threat and the self-fulfilling prophecies that can result from this phenomenon.