> The only role the tests played in this story is that they are an effective mechanism for making sure teachers actually do their job.
I am having trouble finding a word in that sentence that isn't wrong.
That's not the only role the play. E.g., they also cause people to spend more time on test prep and less on education.
There isn't just one story here, despite your attempts to pretend that teachers are the only problem and tests are the only solution. Which is the political angle you aim to work.
They are not a particularly effective mechanism. Which is why nobody sane uses standardized tests forevaluating, say, which developers to hire.
They are not an effective mechanism for making sure that teachers actually do their jobs. They could only theoretically cover a small part of the teacher's job, and it's not clear how well they cover that. And they lump together all of the other factors that go into even that small slice of a student's performance.
Can you be specific about what "test prep" means and how it differs from "education"?
Again, many larger companies (e.g., Google, Goldman, MS, DE Shaw) do attempt to standardize their hiring procedures and evaluation methods. But I suppose they are all "insane", right?
Are you seriously saying that any of those outfits uses a fill-in-the-bubble standardized test to make decisions about hiring, firing, and promotion for their software developers?
If not, I don't see what your point is.
I also don't believe you really don't understand where education and test prep diverge. I think that's a rhetorical technique.
Are you seriously saying that any of those outfits uses a fill-in-the-bubble standardized test to make decisions about hiring, firing, and promotion for their software developers?
They have collections of questions they ask on interviews, each assigned relative difficulties, and a standardized way to evaluate answers. They ask interviewers to stick to a certain structure, and discard results if an interviewer goes rogue. Standardization is about making sure results are objective and comparable to each other - "fill in the bubbles" is just one particular easy-to-grade method of accomplishing that.
In the past companies (pre Griggs v. Duke Power) did use even more standardized methods, which included "fill in the bubbles", they just don't get too close to completely objective standardized tests due to lawsuit risk.
I also don't believe you really don't understand where education and test prep diverge. I think that's a rhetorical technique.
For a decently designed test (such as the one I linked to) I don't believe they diverge significantly. As I suspected, you are unable to justify your claim that they do.
Ok. So your answer is: no, nobody uses a test like that for hiring. Why? Because, being cheap to grade, they're not a good measure for anything subtle. Like hiring decisions. And they certainly don't use them to evaluate anything after hiring.
As to the difference between education and test prep, I'm not unable to justify my position; I'm unwilling to try to do so to you. I don't think you're a serious conversational participant here, by which I mean one who's actually willing to learn anything.
But as a hint, your basic claim is that a fill-in-the-bubble standardized test is a perfect leading indicator for the decades-long effect we expect education to have. And that it can't be manipulated to diverge from that.
That's a very strong claim, and you're obviously smart enough to find the holes in that. You won't, though, because your whole MO on HN is as relentless debater on a pretty narrow set of political points.
I am having trouble finding a word in that sentence that isn't wrong.
That's not the only role the play. E.g., they also cause people to spend more time on test prep and less on education.
There isn't just one story here, despite your attempts to pretend that teachers are the only problem and tests are the only solution. Which is the political angle you aim to work.
They are not a particularly effective mechanism. Which is why nobody sane uses standardized tests forevaluating, say, which developers to hire.
They are not an effective mechanism for making sure that teachers actually do their jobs. They could only theoretically cover a small part of the teacher's job, and it's not clear how well they cover that. And they lump together all of the other factors that go into even that small slice of a student's performance.