Test Score Apathy
This makes a lot of sense to me as an explanation for why American students fare so poorly on international tests. My senior year I was stubborn as hell, and wanted to do well for the sake of doing well—I'm probably the only high school student in America who worked harder his senior year than any other. But even I had trouble caring on the optional affects-nothing tests (I considered walking out on a couple), and I almost certainly wouldn't have put in much effort for a test I wouldn't even get the results of.
posted by Jadagul at 8/11/2005 06:15:00 PM
3 Comments:
I can't tell from the article whether anything is at stake for the teachers or the schools in doing well on international tests. If, like their students, they don't learn the results or if those results don't change assessments, curricula, or budgets, there's an extra disincentive. In general, too many variables get in the way of making satisfactory comparisons among different countries. Even among different generations in the same country. That does not stop me from thinking that student attitudes about academic distinction that seem to be be prevalent now in American public schools suck. You seem to be an extraordinary exception to the rule, and it would be interesting, and possibly instructive, to know how that happened.
Blog Apathy. I'm sorry that the Hurley clan abandoned its blogs just when their lives got really newsworthy. I hope my interloping wasn't why. Anyway, I've gotten tired of waiting for a new post to ask this: you have added "Trackback" to your blog. What is Trackback?
Trackbacks are a way to link blogs together. If someone else writes a blog post in response to a post of mine, he can 'ping' my blog; a link to his post will show up under the 'trackbacks' link, so people who want to see what others have said about my post can read his.
As for the apathy...it has more to do with the start of school. I was trying to kick my news habit so I'd have more time to do work, but that seems to have failed completely. I'll probably post again when I come up with something useful and/or interesting to say.
Post a Comment
<< Home