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Arizona is one of the states shamed into doing something about the poor state of K-12 (primary and secondary) education. I hate to see teachers strike, but, seriously, what the heck were they supposed to do? Having to pay for basic classroom supplies out of their own pockets? Massive cuts back during the worse of the recession with the money going elsewhere as the states' finances improved? A scheme a few years ago to sell off state land to pay for on-going educational expenses that would still be there when the land was gone? Sometimes I wish I were a 'super' judge with the power to fine politicians at the state and national level for grossly failing to live up to their duties. It wouldn't work. My biases aren't much better than anyone else's. But the thought of it makes me feel better.
In the last week I've seen some pretty disturbing stuff from the college level. By chance what I saw was from Florida, but it could have been anywhere in the US.
Last night on the national news was video of graduating students getting manhandled across the stage at their own graduation at the University of Florida. Certainly as long as I remember high school graduations there were always a few kids who insisted on showing off. Back in the day it was mostly kids who barely made it through. Dumbass guys, girls who wanted to get married to whomever as soon as they could, class clowns begging for the last few laughs of their sorry school days. There was always some girl who thought it would be clever to decorate her mortarboard. Stupid looking, but at least it wasn't disruptive. In the old days some clown would gesture wildly or take a deep bow somewhere across the stage usually after they'd been handed their diploma. The college graduations I saw were more sedate. The university I attended had a good idea. No marching across the stage except for Doctor's degree candidates receiving their hoods. The rest stood up in place in groups according to the degrees they were getting (and there were a lot of kinds of degrees!), somebody conferred the degrees, and then the graduates sat back down. The paper was passed out later after the ceremony in college offices. It was still a long process, but nothing like having thousands of people tramp across the stage! I was aghast when at the much larger university where I did my graduate work they were tramping across the stage. (I went to a friend's graduation not my own. I only went because the current President of the United States was the speaker.) Yesterday's video showed that bows and wild arm gestures have become stopping as their names are called and doing a little dance before getting their diploma. Oh, horrors! Graduating is supposed to be a sign of maturity. But not with these folks! That was bad enough, but then this official of some sort was grabbing these clowns bodily and forcefully shoving them on. The disrespect on both sides was pretty damn thick. And the kids who could see what was happening in front of them didn't stop showing off... For god's sake people, if graduation has turned into a ridiculous shoving match and test of wills, just get rid of the ceremony. Graduations were always dull, now they are clearly becoming just an embarrassment.
The other thing came from the University of Central Florida, which in a surprisingly short time has gone from literally not existing to perhaps the largest single university in the country. I know nothing about the academics there but given its lightning growth over the recent few decades, its not likely to be as great an institution as it would like to be. At any rate I saw a YouTube video the other day that someone recorded of a professor reading the riot act to a large lecture class in business. It seems that somebody got hold of the professor's store of test questions, copied it, and distributed it to about a third of the class before the first midterm. The professor said he discovered it by statistically analyzing the test results from the midterm and finding a weird, very non-bell-curve distribution of results. The professor also admitted that one of the students had given him a copy of the some 700 questions that were being passed around. So whether the student or the analysis actually was the first evidence isn't clear, but at least the professor was trying to make people believe he could have caught what had happened, in any case.
I don't condone cheating. When I was teaching Russian I had an unfortunate case of a student cheating on a major homework assignment (the student copied a story I'd seen before out of a book). I cheated very minorly once or twice very early in high school. Then one day when I was a Sophomore, I came to class utterly unprepared for an announced quiz. The teacher was someone I looked up to and respected and at that moment I realized that it would be far worse to lose that teacher's trust than to just fail the quiz like I deserved. In terms of grade it didn't make much difference in the the end that I'd failed a quiz, which reinforced my then new belief that there were far worse outcomes than failing once in a while.
When I was an undergraduate, virtually every fraternity and sorority had its files of old tests that their members could use. Professors were being discouraged, then 40 odd-years ago, *not to keep using the same test questions over and over again for years.* Some professors resisted by not letting students keep their test papers after they saw the grades, and maybe that helped some.
But getting back to this professor from UCF, if I could talk to him face to face I'd have a few choice words. First the professor stated that always before test results in his classes always came out to nice bell curves. Guess what, you can't get a nice bell curve unless everything is random. It's what bell curves are good at showing... that things are random. We can happily agree that a large cross section of students who sign up for low level courses (by default those that are going to have class sizes large enough for large lecture halls, perhaps with multiple sections in those large lecture halls) are probably going to be fairly random. [On the other hand beginning Russian courses like I taught didn't have a random sample of students. Almost everyone in the class had studied some other language before trying Russian. Not too surprisingly the grades were skewed toward the high end. Not a nice bell curve at all. I'd love to credit my teaching, but honestly they were better students on average than the ones over in the beginning Spanish sections.] So what else has to be random to get a bell curve on a test. Uh, the test questions... One thing that was truly annoying as an undergraduate was having tests in lecture courses with questions that came from god knows where, certainly not the lectures, certainly not the assigned reading. I'm a firm believer in grading on what is important and too often what you'd see in lecture courses was grading on trivia. The problem with grading on a curve is that the students who get the best grades are the ones who didn't need the course in the first place. If they are so interested they already know the trivia, that's fine. But do you really want to separate your potential majors on that basis?
There were 50 questions on the above professor's midterm. I think I can be fairly certain we are not talking about a lot of essays. How many of the questions were true/false or multiple choice? Likely all of them, otherwise the graders would have a heck of a lot of work to do. What exactly is the important matter he was trying to teach in this course? Terminology? Basic principles of whatever?
The contrarian in me wonders why the professor didn't hand out his test file of 700 questions at the start of the term. 'Hey, people this is what I want you to know. Your tests are going to be 90% from these and 10% from stuff you are going to have to work for. I don't care if you earn a B coming to class or just memorizing this list of questions, but I damn well want you to learn these things. And you aren't getting an A unless I see something more than memorizing just these questions...' That would be the start of my discussion with the professor.
In the last week I've seen some pretty disturbing stuff from the college level. By chance what I saw was from Florida, but it could have been anywhere in the US.
Last night on the national news was video of graduating students getting manhandled across the stage at their own graduation at the University of Florida. Certainly as long as I remember high school graduations there were always a few kids who insisted on showing off. Back in the day it was mostly kids who barely made it through. Dumbass guys, girls who wanted to get married to whomever as soon as they could, class clowns begging for the last few laughs of their sorry school days. There was always some girl who thought it would be clever to decorate her mortarboard. Stupid looking, but at least it wasn't disruptive. In the old days some clown would gesture wildly or take a deep bow somewhere across the stage usually after they'd been handed their diploma. The college graduations I saw were more sedate. The university I attended had a good idea. No marching across the stage except for Doctor's degree candidates receiving their hoods. The rest stood up in place in groups according to the degrees they were getting (and there were a lot of kinds of degrees!), somebody conferred the degrees, and then the graduates sat back down. The paper was passed out later after the ceremony in college offices. It was still a long process, but nothing like having thousands of people tramp across the stage! I was aghast when at the much larger university where I did my graduate work they were tramping across the stage. (I went to a friend's graduation not my own. I only went because the current President of the United States was the speaker.) Yesterday's video showed that bows and wild arm gestures have become stopping as their names are called and doing a little dance before getting their diploma. Oh, horrors! Graduating is supposed to be a sign of maturity. But not with these folks! That was bad enough, but then this official of some sort was grabbing these clowns bodily and forcefully shoving them on. The disrespect on both sides was pretty damn thick. And the kids who could see what was happening in front of them didn't stop showing off... For god's sake people, if graduation has turned into a ridiculous shoving match and test of wills, just get rid of the ceremony. Graduations were always dull, now they are clearly becoming just an embarrassment.
The other thing came from the University of Central Florida, which in a surprisingly short time has gone from literally not existing to perhaps the largest single university in the country. I know nothing about the academics there but given its lightning growth over the recent few decades, its not likely to be as great an institution as it would like to be. At any rate I saw a YouTube video the other day that someone recorded of a professor reading the riot act to a large lecture class in business. It seems that somebody got hold of the professor's store of test questions, copied it, and distributed it to about a third of the class before the first midterm. The professor said he discovered it by statistically analyzing the test results from the midterm and finding a weird, very non-bell-curve distribution of results. The professor also admitted that one of the students had given him a copy of the some 700 questions that were being passed around. So whether the student or the analysis actually was the first evidence isn't clear, but at least the professor was trying to make people believe he could have caught what had happened, in any case.
I don't condone cheating. When I was teaching Russian I had an unfortunate case of a student cheating on a major homework assignment (the student copied a story I'd seen before out of a book). I cheated very minorly once or twice very early in high school. Then one day when I was a Sophomore, I came to class utterly unprepared for an announced quiz. The teacher was someone I looked up to and respected and at that moment I realized that it would be far worse to lose that teacher's trust than to just fail the quiz like I deserved. In terms of grade it didn't make much difference in the the end that I'd failed a quiz, which reinforced my then new belief that there were far worse outcomes than failing once in a while.
When I was an undergraduate, virtually every fraternity and sorority had its files of old tests that their members could use. Professors were being discouraged, then 40 odd-years ago, *not to keep using the same test questions over and over again for years.* Some professors resisted by not letting students keep their test papers after they saw the grades, and maybe that helped some.
But getting back to this professor from UCF, if I could talk to him face to face I'd have a few choice words. First the professor stated that always before test results in his classes always came out to nice bell curves. Guess what, you can't get a nice bell curve unless everything is random. It's what bell curves are good at showing... that things are random. We can happily agree that a large cross section of students who sign up for low level courses (by default those that are going to have class sizes large enough for large lecture halls, perhaps with multiple sections in those large lecture halls) are probably going to be fairly random. [On the other hand beginning Russian courses like I taught didn't have a random sample of students. Almost everyone in the class had studied some other language before trying Russian. Not too surprisingly the grades were skewed toward the high end. Not a nice bell curve at all. I'd love to credit my teaching, but honestly they were better students on average than the ones over in the beginning Spanish sections.] So what else has to be random to get a bell curve on a test. Uh, the test questions... One thing that was truly annoying as an undergraduate was having tests in lecture courses with questions that came from god knows where, certainly not the lectures, certainly not the assigned reading. I'm a firm believer in grading on what is important and too often what you'd see in lecture courses was grading on trivia. The problem with grading on a curve is that the students who get the best grades are the ones who didn't need the course in the first place. If they are so interested they already know the trivia, that's fine. But do you really want to separate your potential majors on that basis?
There were 50 questions on the above professor's midterm. I think I can be fairly certain we are not talking about a lot of essays. How many of the questions were true/false or multiple choice? Likely all of them, otherwise the graders would have a heck of a lot of work to do. What exactly is the important matter he was trying to teach in this course? Terminology? Basic principles of whatever?
The contrarian in me wonders why the professor didn't hand out his test file of 700 questions at the start of the term. 'Hey, people this is what I want you to know. Your tests are going to be 90% from these and 10% from stuff you are going to have to work for. I don't care if you earn a B coming to class or just memorizing this list of questions, but I damn well want you to learn these things. And you aren't getting an A unless I see something more than memorizing just these questions...' That would be the start of my discussion with the professor.