if you think you are smart, you most likely not

So You Think You’re Smart…

By John J. Edwards III

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Could you cut it as a high-school student today? In an academic sense?

A school-board member in a large U.S. school district recently put himself to the test, with surprising results.

As recounted by educator and author Marion Brady on the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog, the board member, a friend of Mr. Brady’s, decided to take standardized math and reading tests that his state administers to 10th-graders.

Said the board member of his results: “I won’t beat around the bush. The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess 10 out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62%. In our system, that’s a ‘D,’ and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.”

The board member said he rejected the argument that the material would have been fresher in his mind had he still been a student. “[D]oesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

Mr. Brady’s friend’s experiment is an extreme example—and raises important issues of pedagogical policy—but parents of school-age children encounter more minor difficulties with ordinary homework, too.

My daughter, in fifth grade, has already brought home some math problems that I’ve found nettlesome to figure out. As I was never much for higher math even in my school days, I’m dreading having to help her and my 7-year-old son with homework when they’re older.

Readers, do you find yourself struggling to assist your children with assignments in subjects that aren’t your forte? How have they been doing on those all-important standardized tests—and how do you think you would do on them? Are the standardized tests kids take today too hard?


http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/12/07/so-you-think-youre-smart/