Re: [Phys-L] other problems with what is (or isn't) on the test

[Jeff Bigler <jcb@mit.edu>]

On 6/15/2012 8:58 PM, John Denker wrote:

> I leave it as a question to each person on this list:  What are YOU really
> teaching?  What do you expect YOUR students to retain years from now?

I have a somewhat enviable situation in this regard.  Massachusetts only
requires one high stakes test in one science class.  All of my students
have already jumped through that hoop, so I don't need to prepare them
for a badly written and badly administered high stakes test.  I'm also
the only physics teacher in my school, which means I don't have to worry
about my students being able to answer other teachers' badly written and
badly administered questions.  I only have to get them to be able to
answer my own badly written and badly administered questions.

I give out course evaluations twice a year--once in late November or
early December, and a second one at the end of the course.  One of the
types of comments I received from some of my honors students (many of
whom are successful "honors" students because they have learned how to
successfully game the system) last fall was that my tests questions were
too difficult, because many of the questions required students to
combine ideas and concepts from different topics and sub-topics.  In the
June evaluations, none of the students from the same class claimed that
the questions were too difficult, and one student commented that she
believed that the class had made her smarter.

The way I describe it to my students, I teach life.  Physics is the name
for the tools we have chosen to use.
-- 
Jeff Bigler
Lynn English HS; Lynn, MA, USA
"Magic" is what we call Science before we understand it.