I am preparing for the GMAT right now, I have a Bachelors in Computer Science and a Masters In Computer Science with a 3.8 GPA, 10 years of full time engineering work experience and I still find the test extremely hard. These tests are written to trick. Testing to check your knowledge is different from testing to see if you can be tricked. The questions are worded in twisted and confusing ways that makes the test so hard. Some students might be successful and others may not be as much. Standardized testing does not test a candidates true capability, it just measures the output of one test on that one particular day, how in the world can that be accurate ?
dreamcatcherr2002 you god damn right omg, I have a bachelor degree in CS too, I felt all of these questions create to trick me. Very frustrating back when I was in highsschool
I was never a great test taker. I was a creative and a philosophical individual throughout my school years, but never one outperforming others in the areas of standardized testing, which favored visual students who loved problem-solving. Because of that, I always thought that I was a below average student, a mindset that drove me to subpar academic performance and then, community college. But then, a professor recognized my talent in writing and philosophy, and praised me for ability to do academically well for the first time. Through her, I went on to UC Berkeley, got an English degree with Magna Cum Laude attached to my name, and have accomplished a slew of things within the institution that I never would've dream of back in high school. Looking back, I realized how standardized testing doesn't really correlate to one's ability, and in fact does not recognize students who are highly tactile and auditory and imaginative.
+BeTheFirst I was one of those visual students who loved problem solving ;) I rocked the tests. Later on i got to be a teacher and realized how important are the different styles of learning and thinking. Every kid has areas of brilliance, and every kid has some things that are just hard. Sometimes all it takes is one experience or one person like your professor to open up a new world!
Haebichan I had it so bad I had the standardized problem with regular tests. Often I got 60-70s on tests in third grade and in 4th I passed 6th grade math!
Hello! I had to listen to this TED Talk for my psychology course at my university. I must say EVERYTHING YOU SAID IS WELL PUT. I fully agree with the idea of finding an alternative for assessing students on items other than exams. I have always been a poor test taker. Not because of the content, simply because of the environment that I am assessing in. Meaning, I have high testing anxiety. I wish that I was able to do better in school. I would be able to if exams and quiz assessments were not there. While I understand the context of assessing one over a certain length of material, it does not actively or appropriately measure the student's learning capabilities. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Yes exactly I'm a junior in high school and m so frustrated, i am a very intelligent hard working diligent student that will do great in the work and college field! I've ACED every standardized test I've ever taken so far since the 3rd grade (level 4's) and i just got a 1360...on the SAT test. 1360!!! I know I can retake it but bottom line, I am NOT a dumb student, for one i didn't complete many questions or the essay (not enough time) and for two, if i were to send that score in to colleges I'd immediately get overlooked and judged by that ONE test which is incompatible with my ACTUAL academic habits and abilities. That's fair? I don't think so. I'd be great in college, standardized testing is a joke.
I've been to university. I had to do an IQ test,I was drugged on oxycontin,valium and the test giver even questioned the fact I had driven to the test location. I did the test that said I was high end average, no consideration given for my condition, and the psych giving the test told me I'd struggle at university.I informed her I had been to uni and her test was crap.My daughter after her biology honours has an academic post, unheard of in Australia, a PHD is usually a minimum. After her academic post she has a PHD scholarship. According to standardised tests she would fail biology.So much for IQ tests.
Vashti B. Girl I was in the same boat as you. Wound up going to junior college and then got accepted into the very same schools that rejected me 🤷🏽♀️.
I'm halfway through, and now I'm imagining a friendly little snowman talking 😋😂 If you just listen to the audio, you'll totally start to visualize Olaf!
Standardized testing may have harmed many in that they do not test to a person's talents. I know someone who never tested well but maintained straight A's in her major: Spanish. In fact, whatever the language she took, she straight A'd, except for Latin which gave a B result. So shouldn't the people doing the testing wonder how someone who didn't do well on standard testing did so well in languages? Maybe that same person didn't do so well in spatial relations but did well in languages. Then, too, we have this to take into consideration. He/she born to professional parents, say, a doctor and a lawyer, or two lawyers, has a head start in that they're exposed to vocabulary as a norm rather than learning. Someone the child of an attorney has the jump going into, say, Econ 101 since he/she already is at home with the vocabulary and many economic themes, not to mention knowing who John Maynard Keynes, or Milton Friedman, or Adam Smith, J. K. Galbraith, among others. So standardized testing simply is a way of managing numbers but harming, even destroying, many in the process.
Jay Young I had it so bad I had the standardized problem with regular tests. Often I got 60-70s on tests in third grade and in 4th I passed 6th grade math!
Treating IQ is testing cognitive potential, regardless of whether it correlates with socioeconomic status. The direction of causality, if any, is a separate question.
it fails cause some teachers still use a chalk boards instead of modern day resources like whiteboards, projection screens for math classes like my 8th grade teacher Mr.Clemente in upstate New York had or even use old VCR or DVD's on the current topic there teaching about in there 40 minute class period
Hey Rob! I am glad that you are continuing to do the good work. I hope that you are doing well. I hopw to see you soon. I will continue to follow you. William
Because it is for the sake of making revenue for this kind of greedy business model. They use standardized test and can control the difficulty from it and if the student fail then they have to retake the subject or module which result in making more money. Since student need to pay extra money just because he or she fails the test
Notice how these statistics are being presented in a way that obviously involves cherry picking results: 7:47 Why only the first year? Probably because the other years didn't give the desired outcome of the researchers.
If so many people & educators agree that standardized testing is overdone & ineffective, & the "data" keeps saying they are counterproductive, WHY, OH WHY do we keep having them shoved down our throats year after year? Your reasoning is in favor of the traditional liberal arts education. This was what we did for a long time until our educational wizards got a hold of our schools.
I think schools must have some level of standardized testing. If you go to school for 13 years, you better have a descent ability to do algebra, read and write. If you are an American student and you can't perform basic algebra and English skills, than what have you and your teachers been doing in school for 13 years. School is about paper work: the ability to obtain and transfer knowledge by means of pen (or other drawing instruments) and paper: graphs, essays, reports, syllogisms, punctuation, algebraic formulas, etc.
+Bruce John Wayne School is about paper work, but that's a problem because life is not. Sure, we have to do some paperwork (a lot depending on the job), but why not teach things that everyone actually needs in life after school? What does a person want in life... be happy, make money, stay out of jail. We should teach happiness, economics, and law.
+N Marbletoe "We should teach happiness, economics, and law." If a person is not at least average in math, he or she will have serious trouble in economics. When it comes to laws, reading and writing helps a lot. I believe that finding happiness and having good support groups after school, as well as basic construction skill, mechanical skills and homemaking skills are up to a child's parents not the school system. A child's parents are also responsible for building virtues (wisdom, honesty, generosity, self reliance, bravery) in their sons and daughters until they are 16 to 18 years old. No parents are perfect, but most parents these days get divorced, have more girlfriends, boyfriends, or remarry. Parents do drugs around there kids too.
+Bruce John Wayne Agree you need math for economics. So i'm saying, teaching math using money = motivation = learning. I learned to add by playing darts, and I got fast at it. Kids should read the law. That would be an excellent way to sharpen the English skills. Some of the laws are written so badly we should flunk the lawmakers, lolm but the Constitution is beautiful English. My basic idea is that learning c = 2 pi r to pass a test is not as good as learning c = 2 pi r to figure out how much wood you need to build your project. I totally dig your comments on happiness, having good support and various skills. Self reliance is a very good thing for happiness. I was thinking of stuff like PE, art, and i think they should teach meditation too. Maybe a strange idea, but it works! I agree the parents are responsible for morals; schools can at best only help.
Life isn't all about paperwork... Also, how can one day in a student's life show their entire potential, compared to the year of life that GPA can show? Think about it.
+Wingsofdawn School can not possibly cover everything in life. School is supposed to specialize in the technicalities of spoken and written language. It is not a schools job to teach everything in life.
Mr. Sternberg's presentation is littered with logical fallacies. It does not follow that because he succeeded in life despite having performed badly on an IQ test that IQ tests are bad any more than it follows that because a successful football player once performed badly on tryouts that tryouts are bad. Certainly there are reasons for poor performance on mental assessments besides a deficiency in the target of assessment; anxiety, hunger, fatigue, for example. But this is true of any assessment, including the assessments - "creative," "wisdom," "practical," - he recommends we add to the repertoire of existing assessments. Also, aside from being a disanalogy, his analogy between medical tests and IQ tests is historically inaccurate. First, it is a disanalogy because IQ tests are more akin to math tests than they are to medical tests because IQ tests gauge raw reasoning and problem-solving ability where as medical tests gauge familiarity with a continually expanding body of knowledge. Second, it is historically inaccurate because IQ tests have in fact been refined and updated since their introduction 100 years ago. His comments about meritocracy being the original impetus behind standardized tests but that they wound up largely maintaining the status quo assume that the rich are not meritocratic; thus, the tests reflect socioeconomic status independently of merit. But this is not warranted. It may be the case that the status quo remains mostly, but not entirely, unchanged because the rich tend to be smarter to begin with, and smart begets smart. This of course does not jibe with Mr. Sternberg's fanciful ideas, and so it must be rejected. Standardized tests give bright and ambitious members of the lower strata of society an opportunity to climb the social ladder. Statistically, bright people are rare, and they are even rarer among the lower strata of society. Thus it should not be surprising that not many members of the lower strata climb the social ladder. But meritocracy is not egalitarianism. Nor should it be.
Zahra Qureshi I wasn't comparing IQ tests to tryouts per se, but rather was illustrating the silliness of dismissing either because of subsequent success despite having flopped in either. Standardized tests have remarkably proven able to predict a wide variety of outcomes for people regardless of race, socioeconomic background, gender, etc. I say "remarkably" because if standardized tests were ill-suited for this "completely [non]standardized society" you write about, they would have not have the powerfully predictive power they have proven themselves to have again and again. I recommend that you watch another TEDx talk by the industrial psychologist Nathan Kuncel offering an alternative viewpoint to Sternberg's.
Zahra Qureshi I compared dismissing the two for similar reasons; just as it would be illogical to dismiss tryouts because some people performed badly in them and they still succeeded in fields tryouts predict success in, so too it would be illogical to dismiss standardized tests because some people performed badly in them but nevertheless succeeded in fields they predict success in. There was no comparison in terms of content, but in terms of the functions they serve in their respective fields - those functions are not invalidated because of exceptions to the norm. Your contention about why test scores are predictive is erroneous. Test scores predict success in a wide variety of life outcomes even when factors such as education are controlled for. A person's performance on an IQ test, for example, predicts job performance better than a person's educational attainment; thus, a person with a significantly higher IQ score (e.g. 140) is likelier to succeed in a highly complex job than a person whose IQ is significantly lower (e.g. 120), even if the person with the lower IQ score has a four-year degree from Harvard, and the person with a higher IQ score has a two-year degree from his local community college. Similarly, a person with a high IQ score (e.g. 135) who never graduated college is likelier to succeed in a cognitively complex job even if he's from a family of three whose annual income is less than $15,000 than a person with a slightly above average IQ score (e.g. 115) who graduated Harvard who comes from a family of three whose annual income is $200,000. In 2005, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education published an article that showed that socioeconomic disparities between blacks and whites, for example, cannot account for the test score disparities between the two groups, as whites from families with annual incomes less than $10,000 averaged 10 points higher on the SAT than blacks from families with annual incomes in the $80,000-$100,000 range! >>>There is vast potential in many other types of students who may not function well in our current lacking educational system, but that does not mean that they are just too dumb to do anything of value.
Zahra Qureshi As you suggested, I watched Nikki Aldeli's video. And as expected, it was little more than a volley of platitudes. This is not to say that none of the points she raised were good; some were, but they've been raised many times before. There is nothing in her video that even remotely undermines the usefulness and validity of standardized tests. Also, assailing standardized tests for only measuring what they're designed to measure, that is, cognitive ability and/or scholastic achievement, and nothing else, is like attacking scales for only measuring weight and not body mass index, height, and blood pressure. I am a little alarmed, btw, that you were swayed more by a presentation by a high school student that hinged on anecdotes than a presentation by a field expert that was amply loaded with data accumulated over years. Is that what your education has wrought for your mind?
Zahra Qureshi Even ACTs and SATs; all tests of mental ability tap into g, that is, the general intelligence factor, and as such are more or less tests of general intelligence. That is a terrible reason to devalue the significance of statistics. "Holistic," that is, "look at the whole individual" admissions are also not always accurate either; they can be and are subject to the unjust biases and prejudices of the evaluators. Even grades are not always accurate in reflecting what a student is truly capable of! Standardized tests are the most objective way of evaluating a candidate's potential for successfully coping with college level rigor. Because curricula are not standardized across the country, an admissions representative has no way of knowing whether an "A" in one school is equivalent to an "A" at another school; indeed, an admissions rep has no way of even knowing if an "A" from one teacher is the same as an "A" from another teacher in the same school! One teacher's "A" may be another teacher's "B," or "C,"; one school's "A" may be another's "B," or "C." Would it be fair for a student who produced the same quality of work to get a "C" as another did to get an "A" to be passed over because all the admission rep sees are an "A" and "C" without the work that yielded those letter grades? But a 36 on the ACT means the same thing regardless of where an applicant went to school; if an admissions rep sees a student with some C's, some B's, and a few A's, but with a high test score, and sees another applicant with almost all A's but a low test score, the higher test scoring candidate is no longer at a disadvantage.
Zahra Qureshi Also, since you evidently prefer anecdotal 'evidence' over hard data, here's an anecdote. I was born into a poor Mexican immigrant family whose parents didn't speak English. I never went to any good schools and thus, presumably, missed out on training for improved cognitive ability. Yet I always scored high on mental/scholastic assessments. Here's another anecdote: once upon a time a man from a poor family whose stepfather used to beat him obtained a perfect score on the SAT despite having gone to run-of-the-mill public schools. His name is Chris Langan - who has one of the highest measured IQs of anyone in the United States. I also have a friend whose family, like mine, once relied on welfare to make ends meet. He is also quite intelligent, has scored highly on mental tests, has an extensive vocabulary, and reasons and writes better than your average college grad. In fact I have several such friends. Again, just anecdotal... since you apparently feel anecdotes are just as good as, if not better than, data acquired through painstaking study and research.
I am preparing for the GMAT right now, I have a Bachelors in Computer Science and a Masters In Computer Science with a 3.8 GPA, 10 years of full time engineering work experience and I still find the test extremely hard. These tests are written to trick. Testing to check your knowledge is different from testing to see if you can be tricked. The questions are worded in twisted and confusing ways that makes the test so hard. Some students might be successful and others may not be as much. Standardized testing does not test a candidates true capability, it just measures the output of one test on that one particular day, how in the world can that be accurate ?
dreamcatcherr2002 you god damn right omg, I have a bachelor degree in CS too, I felt all of these questions create to trick me. Very frustrating back when I was in highsschool
Make a giant engineering machine. >:D
I was never a great test taker. I was a creative and a philosophical individual throughout my school years, but never one outperforming others in the areas of standardized testing, which favored visual students who loved problem-solving. Because of that, I always thought that I was a below average student, a mindset that drove me to subpar academic performance and then, community college. But then, a professor recognized my talent in writing and philosophy, and praised me for ability to do academically well for the first time. Through her, I went on to UC Berkeley, got an English degree with Magna Cum Laude attached to my name, and have accomplished a slew of things within the institution that I never would've dream of back in high school. Looking back, I realized how standardized testing doesn't really correlate to one's ability, and in fact does not recognize students who are highly tactile and auditory and imaginative.
+BeTheFirst I was one of those visual students who loved problem solving ;) I rocked the tests. Later on i got to be a teacher and realized how important are the different styles of learning and thinking.
Every kid has areas of brilliance, and every kid has some things that are just hard. Sometimes all it takes is one experience or one person like your professor to open up a new world!
Haebichan I had it so bad I had the standardized problem with regular tests. Often I got 60-70s on tests in third grade and in 4th I passed 6th grade math!
Hello! I had to listen to this TED Talk for my psychology course at my university. I must say EVERYTHING YOU SAID IS WELL PUT. I fully agree with the idea of finding an alternative for assessing students on items other than exams. I have always been a poor test taker. Not because of the content, simply because of the environment that I am assessing in. Meaning, I have high testing anxiety. I wish that I was able to do better in school. I would be able to if exams and quiz assessments were not there. While I understand the context of assessing one over a certain length of material, it does not actively or appropriately measure the student's learning capabilities. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Yes exactly I'm a junior in high school and m so frustrated, i am a very intelligent hard working diligent student that will do great in the work and college field! I've ACED every standardized test I've ever taken so far since the 3rd grade (level 4's) and i just got a 1360...on the SAT test. 1360!!! I know I can retake it but bottom line, I am NOT a dumb student, for one i didn't complete many questions or the essay (not enough time) and for two, if i were to send that score in to colleges I'd immediately get overlooked and judged by that ONE test which is incompatible with my ACTUAL academic habits and abilities. That's fair? I don't think so. I'd be great in college, standardized testing is a joke.
I've been to university. I had to do an IQ test,I was drugged on oxycontin,valium and the test giver even questioned the fact I had driven to the test location. I did the test that said I was high end average, no consideration given for my condition, and the psych giving the test told me I'd struggle at university.I informed her I had been to uni and her test was crap.My daughter after her biology honours has an academic post, unheard of in Australia, a PHD is usually a minimum. After her academic post she has a PHD scholarship. According to standardised tests she would fail biology.So much for IQ tests.
what college you are in now
Vashti B. Girl I was in the same boat as you. Wound up going to junior college and then got accepted into the very same schools that rejected me 🤷🏽♀️.
Your SAT score is a holistic representation of your abilities.
I had it so bad I had the standardized problem with regular tests. Often I got 60-70s on tests in third grade and in 4th I passed 6th grade math!
He sounds like Olaf.
Katie Wells tru omg
I'm halfway through, and now I'm imagining a friendly little snowman talking 😋😂 If you just listen to the audio, you'll totally start to visualize Olaf!
Happy :D
Standardized testing may have harmed many in that they do not test to a person's talents. I know someone who never tested well but maintained straight A's in her major: Spanish. In fact, whatever the language she took, she straight A'd, except for Latin which gave a B result. So shouldn't the people doing the testing wonder how someone who didn't do well on standard testing did so well in languages? Maybe that same person didn't do so well in spatial relations but did well in languages. Then, too, we have this to take into consideration. He/she born to professional parents, say, a doctor and a lawyer, or two lawyers, has a head start in that they're exposed to vocabulary as a norm rather than learning. Someone the child of an attorney has the jump going into, say, Econ 101 since he/she already is at home with the vocabulary and many economic themes, not to mention knowing who John Maynard Keynes, or Milton Friedman, or Adam Smith, J. K. Galbraith, among others. So standardized testing simply is a way of managing numbers but harming, even destroying, many in the process.
+Jay Young I've known people like that to.
Jay Young I had it so bad I had the standardized problem with regular tests. Often I got 60-70s on tests in third grade and in 4th I passed 6th grade math!
Oof
Treating IQ is testing cognitive potential, regardless of whether it correlates with socioeconomic status. The direction of causality, if any, is a separate question.
I have a terrible memory and am incredibly creative but I have an easy time getting good scores on standardized testing.
Jeremy Battle Well I'm not trying to prove I'm creative.
Who else was expecting him to hop on that drumset behind him and start rocking out?
IronNautilus lol
Me
it fails cause some teachers still use a chalk boards instead of modern day resources like whiteboards, projection screens for math classes like my 8th grade teacher Mr.Clemente in upstate New York had or even use old VCR or DVD's on the current topic there teaching about in there 40 minute class period
Oof
If we focus on problem solving, the WORLD WORLD be a Better place!
Oof
Hey Rob! I am glad that you are continuing to do the good work. I hope that you are doing well. I hopw to see you soon. I will continue to follow you. William
damn this was made in 2012 and still no visible change praying for the future ..how long we gon suffer from this unjust system
I love how comical he is
Just making it even to 100Just making it even to 100
"Nothing is perfect! Everything is perfectibile!" Jacque Fresco socio-cyberneer=social sciences + cybernetics + engineering= future
+bleepingbobby= happy
Perfection is a direction, not a destination.
They need to label people
Lel
This is where Amazon got the idea, now everyone can have a Mrs. Alexa
Lol. No its amazon's alexa >:)
loved this video
Found under Drum - Topic
Bom boom!
haha this dude has a sense of humor that i love
Because it is for the sake of making revenue for this kind of greedy business model. They use standardized test and can control the difficulty from it and if the student fail then they have to retake the subject or module which result in making more money. Since student need to pay extra money just because he or she fails the test
Tough crowd.
XD
Notice how these statistics are being presented in a way that obviously involves cherry picking results: 7:47 Why only the first year? Probably because the other years didn't give the desired outcome of the researchers.
How do I get the real sources
Goes from getting a C in psych to being on the AP psych test.... wow.
3:00
If so many people & educators agree that standardized testing is overdone & ineffective, & the "data" keeps saying they are counterproductive, WHY, OH WHY do we keep having them shoved down our throats year after year?
Your reasoning is in favor of the traditional liberal arts education. This was what we did for a long time until our educational wizards got a hold of our schools.
Just making it even to 100
I think schools must have some level of standardized testing. If you go to school for 13 years, you better have a descent ability to do algebra, read and write. If you are an American student and you can't perform basic algebra and English skills, than what have you and your teachers been doing in school for 13 years. School is about paper work: the ability to obtain and transfer knowledge by means of pen (or other drawing instruments) and paper: graphs, essays, reports, syllogisms, punctuation, algebraic formulas, etc.
+Bruce John Wayne School is about paper work, but that's a problem because life is not. Sure, we have to do some paperwork (a lot depending on the job), but why not teach things that everyone actually needs in life after school?
What does a person want in life... be happy, make money, stay out of jail. We should teach happiness, economics, and law.
+N Marbletoe "We should teach happiness, economics, and law." If a person is not at least average in math, he or she will have serious trouble in economics. When it comes to laws, reading and writing helps a lot. I believe that finding happiness and having good support groups after school, as well as basic construction skill, mechanical skills and homemaking skills are up to a child's parents not the school system. A child's parents are also responsible for building virtues (wisdom, honesty, generosity, self reliance, bravery) in their sons and daughters until they are 16 to 18 years old. No parents are perfect, but most parents these days get divorced, have more girlfriends, boyfriends, or remarry. Parents do drugs around there kids too.
+Bruce John Wayne Agree you need math for economics. So i'm saying, teaching math using money = motivation = learning. I learned to add by playing darts, and I got fast at it.
Kids should read the law. That would be an excellent way to sharpen the English skills. Some of the laws are written so badly we should flunk the lawmakers, lolm but the Constitution is beautiful English. My basic idea is that learning c = 2 pi r to pass a test is not as good as learning c = 2 pi r to figure out how much wood you need to build your project.
I totally dig your comments on happiness, having good support and various skills. Self reliance is a very good thing for happiness. I was thinking of stuff like PE, art, and i think they should teach meditation too. Maybe a strange idea, but it works!
I agree the parents are responsible for morals; schools can at best only help.
Life isn't all about paperwork... Also, how can one day in a student's life show their entire potential, compared to the year of life that GPA can show? Think about it.
+Wingsofdawn School can not possibly cover everything in life. School is supposed to specialize in the technicalities of spoken and written language. It is not a schools job to teach everything in life.
Mr. Sternberg's presentation is littered with logical fallacies. It does not follow that because he succeeded in life despite having performed badly on an IQ test that IQ tests are bad any more than it follows that because a successful football player once performed badly on tryouts that tryouts are bad. Certainly there are reasons for poor performance on mental assessments besides a deficiency in the target of assessment; anxiety, hunger, fatigue, for example. But this is true of any assessment, including the assessments - "creative," "wisdom," "practical," - he recommends we add to the repertoire of existing assessments.
Also, aside from being a disanalogy, his analogy between medical tests and IQ tests is historically inaccurate. First, it is a disanalogy because IQ tests are more akin to math tests than they are to medical tests because IQ tests gauge raw reasoning and problem-solving ability where as medical tests gauge familiarity with a continually expanding body of knowledge. Second, it is historically inaccurate because IQ tests have in fact been refined and updated since their introduction 100 years ago.
His comments about meritocracy being the original impetus behind standardized tests but that they wound up largely maintaining the status quo assume that the rich are not meritocratic; thus, the tests reflect socioeconomic status independently of merit. But this is not warranted. It may be the case that the status quo remains mostly, but not entirely, unchanged because the rich tend to be smarter to begin with, and smart begets smart. This of course does not jibe with Mr. Sternberg's fanciful ideas, and so it must be rejected.
Standardized tests give bright and ambitious members of the lower strata of society an opportunity to climb the social ladder. Statistically, bright people are rare, and they are even rarer among the lower strata of society. Thus it should not be surprising that not many members of the lower strata climb the social ladder. But meritocracy is not egalitarianism. Nor should it be.
Zahra Qureshi I wasn't comparing IQ tests to tryouts per se, but rather was illustrating the silliness of dismissing either because of subsequent success despite having flopped in either.
Standardized tests have remarkably proven able to predict a wide variety of outcomes for people regardless of race, socioeconomic background, gender, etc. I say "remarkably" because if standardized tests were ill-suited for this "completely [non]standardized society" you write about, they would have not have the powerfully predictive power they have proven themselves to have again and again. I recommend that you watch another TEDx talk by the industrial psychologist Nathan Kuncel offering an alternative viewpoint to Sternberg's.
Zahra Qureshi I compared dismissing the two for similar reasons; just as it would be illogical to dismiss tryouts because some people performed badly in them and they still succeeded in fields tryouts predict success in, so too it would be illogical to dismiss standardized tests because some people performed badly in them but nevertheless succeeded in fields they predict success in. There was no comparison in terms of content, but in terms of the functions they serve in their respective fields - those functions are not invalidated because of exceptions to the norm.
Your contention about why test scores are predictive is erroneous. Test scores predict success in a wide variety of life outcomes even when factors such as education are controlled for. A person's performance on an IQ test, for example, predicts job performance better than a person's educational attainment; thus, a person with a significantly higher IQ score (e.g. 140) is likelier to succeed in a highly complex job than a person whose IQ is significantly lower (e.g. 120), even if the person with the lower IQ score has a four-year degree from Harvard, and the person with a higher IQ score has a two-year degree from his local community college. Similarly, a person with a high IQ score (e.g. 135) who never graduated college is likelier to succeed in a cognitively complex job even if he's from a family of three whose annual income is less than $15,000 than a person with a slightly above average IQ score (e.g. 115) who graduated Harvard who comes from a family of three whose annual income is $200,000.
In 2005, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education published an article that showed that socioeconomic disparities between blacks and whites, for example, cannot account for the test score disparities between the two groups, as whites from families with annual incomes less than $10,000 averaged 10 points higher on the SAT than blacks from families with annual incomes in the $80,000-$100,000 range!
>>>There is vast potential in many other types of students who may not function well in our current lacking educational system, but that does not mean that they are just too dumb to do anything of value.
Zahra Qureshi As you suggested, I watched Nikki Aldeli's video. And as expected, it was little more than a volley of platitudes. This is not to say that none of the points she raised were good; some were, but they've been raised many times before. There is nothing in her video that even remotely undermines the usefulness and validity of standardized tests. Also, assailing standardized tests for only measuring what they're designed to measure, that is, cognitive ability and/or scholastic achievement, and nothing else, is like attacking scales for only measuring weight and not body mass index, height, and blood pressure.
I am a little alarmed, btw, that you were swayed more by a presentation by a high school student that hinged on anecdotes than a presentation by a field expert that was amply loaded with data accumulated over years. Is that what your education has wrought for your mind?
Zahra Qureshi Even ACTs and SATs; all tests of mental ability tap into g, that is, the general intelligence factor, and as such are more or less tests of general intelligence.
That is a terrible reason to devalue the significance of statistics. "Holistic," that is, "look at the whole individual" admissions are also not always accurate either; they can be and are subject to the unjust biases and prejudices of the evaluators. Even grades are not always accurate in reflecting what a student is truly capable of! Standardized tests are the most objective way of evaluating a candidate's potential for successfully coping with college level rigor. Because curricula are not standardized across the country, an admissions representative has no way of knowing whether an "A" in one school is equivalent to an "A" at another school; indeed, an admissions rep has no way of even knowing if an "A" from one teacher is the same as an "A" from another teacher in the same school! One teacher's "A" may be another teacher's "B," or "C,"; one school's "A" may be another's "B," or "C." Would it be fair for a student who produced the same quality of work to get a "C" as another did to get an "A" to be passed over because all the admission rep sees are an "A" and "C" without the work that yielded those letter grades? But a 36 on the ACT means the same thing regardless of where an applicant went to school; if an admissions rep sees a student with some C's, some B's, and a few A's, but with a high test score, and sees another applicant with almost all A's but a low test score, the higher test scoring candidate is no longer at a disadvantage.
Zahra Qureshi Also, since you evidently prefer anecdotal 'evidence' over hard data, here's an anecdote. I was born into a poor Mexican immigrant family whose parents didn't speak English. I never went to any good schools and thus, presumably, missed out on training for improved cognitive ability. Yet I always scored high on mental/scholastic assessments.
Here's another anecdote: once upon a time a man from a poor family whose stepfather used to beat him obtained a perfect score on the SAT despite having gone to run-of-the-mill public schools. His name is Chris Langan - who has one of the highest measured IQs of anyone in the United States.
I also have a friend whose family, like mine, once relied on welfare to make ends meet. He is also quite intelligent, has scored highly on mental tests, has an extensive vocabulary, and reasons and writes better than your average college grad. In fact I have several such friends.
Again, just anecdotal... since you apparently feel anecdotes are just as good as, if not better than, data acquired through painstaking study and research.
This is a low IQ man, my assessment at a distance and probably spot on, and I am suspicious of his jaundiced mind set.
Just making it even to 100
Just making it even to 100
Just making it even to 100