Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Learning by Making
American kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests.
A great article in Slate about how students are being educated.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

I wish our state would have the Maker Faire sometime (also when I'm not at school).

Arizona isn't a state too crazy about standardized tests, although I am always happy when I hear new team members saying how happy they are that they are here, and not obsessing over some test over the other (or at the Science Olympiad club, where the competition is primarily who can cram the most...)

Another good read would be The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids by Alexandra Robbins.

Ugh, Texas is the worst when it comes to standardized tests. We just switched to an even crazier system, and it's apparently an even more unbalanced system. So I agree completely this.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

i go to Technical high school and still you see the standardized tests taking president over the education in the technical areas. i had a talk with a student in pluming about our standardized test, the MCAS, i took this test as he did and we both took the SAT's recently and the SAT's did not reflect what we experienced in the MCAS nor did either test judge our skills in the professions we would take part in the rest of our lives. he made a few valid points about how our school should be judged on how many students can pass the certifications in there given technical areas. so we logically thought the technical or vocational high schools should not judged on test scores but send there best students to a contest that measures skills.there is an organization that lets you compete in the technical areas at a district, state, national and world level. this organization is Skills USA and i think if technical high schools were judged on this it would be a more accurate gauge of progress in schools. this year i partook in the contest and at districts i was amazed from the test scores. at states the competition was hard and i was blown away with some of the skills my fellow students possessed. unfortunetly my team was the only one to win gold at states (in mechatronics) but using the data my school under preformed in every category but my own. this means we should really beef up the shop education right? wrong we scored good on MCAS and that seems to be where the focus is still currently at. with the states mind set my program should receive more money, we do need the funding but using the data about skills usa the rest of the school needs it more. flawed system?

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

What percentage of a students education do you believe should be spent learning hands on skills in High School? What would you cut? I see a lot of attacking of standardized tests, but why would schools put such an emphasis on "Standardized tests" if there wasn't some value for someone in those?

Often we push to incentives performance. In order to give out the incentives, we need a measure. Someone decides on the measure, and then incentives are tied to that measure. Folks that are good at "playing the game" may work to get the best incentive as opposed to the less measureable goals.

I think the focus on standardized testing is a resultant of this behaviour. There are several analogies that can be drawn to business. In bothe cases I think you can show short term improvements in the metrics and long term issues arising from an overfocus on those same metrics.

I would love to see more hands on experience, but I would caution folks to be careful about what you might take the place of.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

I'm not a huge standardized test fan, and I agree that hands-on learning can be beneficial. However, I believe this article is fundamentally misrepresenting the situation it's critiquing.

First off, the sample is not a science question, it's a reading comprehension question. Fortunately, it's actually written so as to benefit both science-lovers who can use common sense to decipher the answer and readers who can simply read it. (Contrary to the article, you can easily know both the answer and the purpose of a microscope from reading Caution #4 and sentence 1, respectively.) Nor is there anything wrong with a 60% incorrect rate. Too little variance in correct-response rates makes it hard to students' actual levels and areas of growth. Scores are comparative.

Hands-on learning is certainly helpful in conjunction with theory. But as a substitute? The monkeys that typed Hamlet didn't actually learn iambic pentameter. The problem isn't chiefly one of testing students' grasp of theory, but of finding additional incentives for schools directed towards teaching problem solving and practical understanding.

But as IKE said, be careful what you replace. Standardized tests aren't perfect, and they can and are being improved. Educational policy on incentives is not perfect and similarly needs work. But nothing (except life) can test everything you need to know. But standardized exams certainly do test some of it. First 9 questions I randomly chose.

I think the issue, at least the way I see it, is that standardized tests cause teachers to teach to the tests. So instead of getting a broad education that allows you to decide upon a career, you learn how to answer a specific multiple choice question that you'll never see again. So the measure of aptitude is actually tremendously skewed. While I agree that hands on learning shouldn't replace standardized testing, something needs to replace it. Too often the focus of school is passing tests instead of giving kids the tools they need to become productive, happy members of society (research can be productive, so theory is in included in that). That's what needs to change.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

My wife is an executive in our local school system and I get these types of questions all the time. We (in this forum) are engineers or engineer-want-to-bes so I look at the education infrastructure as a system.

1 - Without negative (corrective) feedback the system is open loop and can run away. So I think testing of some kind is absolutely necessary, how else can we get feedback? And the larger the sample (the whole state of TX rather than one school or one school system) the better.

2 - There are awesome teachers out there who are hampered by "teaching to the test", no doubt. And I would say that the great majority of teachers mean well and work hard. But the reality is that there are (more than a few) poor, under-qualified and/or un-caring teachers as well. The great teachers are under-appreciated and the awful teachers are difficult to detect/remove.

3 - It is a dis-service to high school students to NOT test them and then subject them to the college entrance testing (AP, ACT, SAT etc). The reality is that students MUST compete within a standardized testing format at some point.

4 - AP teachers must "teach to the test" or what is the point?

5 - Being an awesome teacher is one thing, being aware of the content necessary to prepare a student for the next class (like PreCal before Cal) or a college entrance exam is quite another. It is too much to ask of an individual teacher. So I think teaching from common outlines to make sure common material is covered (but taught in a manner chosen by the teacher) is a good thing. BTW, this is what TX is trying to do this year - switch to EOY course-specific type exams and a common course outline.

6 - Newb teachers LOVE "teaching to the test" until they begin to develop unique methods and materials. Though they intend to become awesome teachers, it takes time. Thorough outlines and mentor teachers are a great help the first few years.

Well, that is my 2 cents.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

With all due respect that is a parent's job, not the school. A high school teacher only sees a student like 4.5 hours a week (in a group setting), not enough time to impart basic personality traits (though they can reinforce them).

The real deal is that we are blaming teachers while expecting them to replace parents in some areas. The greater crisis is with parents, teachers do their job pretty well in my opinion.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

I read this and laughed :D I'm in my school's SciOly team too, and that's basically how we roll :)

As much as I dislike standardized testing, honestly, what can you do? You really do need some way to measure stuff... And really, I don't believe in grades (you know, those letters and numbers that get on your transcript).. at least in my school they feel so meaningless since the teachers end up flooding everything with filler busy work so that everyone (it seems) can get A's.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

My parents did the opposite. :yikes: Can you say "homeschooled"? (As I got further along, I ran into more subjects I couldn't learn as well at home. Homeschoolers tend to run into that, and groups have classes in that sort of thing.)

However, I did have to do a standardized test each year. It's a way to track progress. If used just as a way to track progress, standardized tests are all well and good. If used as a tool to judge performance on the other hand... Well, then you start getting the "teaching to the test" and the reports of test-rigging by teachers. Guess what the politicians and upper-level school administrations are doing these days? Yep, judging performance based on standardized tests.

I think the main thing, though, is not to let academics get in the way of a good education (more than necessary, that is--if you're failing classes, you may need the good education from the academics!)

While I agree that many parents are pushing their jobs onto teachers, at the same point, school is about taking an idiot kid and giving them the knowledge they need to be well-rounded adults. If that wasn't the case, I'd have skipped English and History entirely, because beyond making me well rounded, those classes are useless to me.




I categorize AP and SAT teams separate from state mandated standardized testing. My comments are all in reference to the TAKS test. And the TAKS test is built for the lowest common denominator. Here's a fun solution: if you can pass AP English, you are exempt from the TAKS English test. That would solve about 90% of the problem right there.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

State mandated testing bothers me primarily because it is also used as a gauge for teacher quality. I will admit we need to ensure quality teachers and that the students are learning. The issue is that a student's score on a test is not indicative of the value added by their experience with that teacher.

Our educational system is set up in such a way that we expect everyone to learn content at the same rate. Addition: 2 weeks, Subtraction: 2 weeks, Multiplication: 1 week, Division: 3 weeks... People don't work that way and, as a result, we end up with students who aren't dumb but just learn a little slower than others being told they are bad at math (apply subject of choice here but I like math for my example). Now, we add in that maybe I'm 85% confident with Addition, 75% with Subtraction... what chance do I have of being good at Division and Multiplication? None. So I'm already behind. But I can probably pass the tests enough to get by. So I pass my tests one year, but remember, I'm still hazy on the core concepts. Now I'm going to build on those next year. It's a disaster. I fail the test. This failure looks bad on my teacher who is teaching me the new material which is not what I'm struggling with at all. How is it their fault that the teacher prior didn't adequately prepare me?

If that example was confusing, would you build a building on a foundation that was only 70% complete? What about a second floor on top of the first floor when the first floor is only 78% complete (on top of the foundation being only 70% complete)?

That's what our educational system does currently. I'm not smart enough to figure out the answer right now... but I can tell you that it's outright foolish to penalize schools or teachers for students not understanding the foundational concepts of the material being taught if that was someone else's responsibility. I will, however, suggest that we consider testing become differential, concepts test at the beginning of the year to determine where the teacher should focus their efforts and then students (and teachers) are evaluated based on the value added during that year. Yes, still an issue with teaching to the test but it rewards students and teachers who actually improve things rather than preserving the status quo.


Presumably you are going into engineering... English is important, a good chunk of my job involves communicating with other people effectively. I won't mention why history is important because I am biased in that I really love history as a subject.

Well, personally, I love being well rounded, and I like when everyone else around me is well rounded. It lowers the possibility of history repeating itself, allows for intelligent cross-curriculum discourse, and makes enjoying both works of fiction and natural creations much more invigorating. But I don't need that to be an engineer, if all I'm gonna do is engineering. And that's my point; being a successful member of society means being able to do a job, but also means knowing the context of the job. If I was just studying engineering, I wouldn't want me to vote on the future of this nation. The problem is, as you mentioned, that the results of standardized tests are not used correctly to further that goal.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Many people who go to school to become engineers don't actually end up doing pure engineering work, my dad for example was a process engineer but now is a US patent Agent. Especially if you want to work at a start-up or even in today's job market. I can guarantee you that any engineering company will take an engineer that has good communication skills (as well as meeting job requirements) over the most brilliant engineer in the world. Engineering is very collaborative and requires engineers to communicate effectively with both other engineers and non-engineers. Furthermore if you don't have the skills to sell your idea to your manager, it won't get implemented in most cases.

Don't let yourself lapse into the faulty "I'm an Engineer, I don't need English" mentality I see far too often with students and classmates.

I could go on and on about stories my dad and numerous guest speakers (usually VP of Engineering at various companies) have told me about how important communication is to being a successful engineer and competitive job applicant.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Makes you a better conversationalist though... ;o)

But would you not panic if it was the first comprehensive test that you had EVER taken? I totally agree about the AP/TAKS English thing.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Agreed - gauging teacher quality is difficult/impossible. We should definitely prefer differential or incremental comparisons. But (it seems to me) other teachers can quickly identify bad teachers. I wonder if one could leverage that somehow, maybe some sort of peer evaluation system...

Okay, I think you guys aren't understanding me at all. I agree with you guys. An engineer who thinks he only needs engineering is gonna be a crappy engineer. But state standardized tests don't encourage that kind of thinking. They cater to the lowest possible standard.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Those tests are not really targeted towards you or your AP/GT-ish teachers. Like my kids (both EEs now) you could probably sleep through TAKS and passed easily. The AP classes teach to the AP test and students in the GT classes can handle the TAKS w/o preparation. Plus AP and GT teachers are normally the cream of the crop, as are SPED and K-3 teachers. In the middle there are a lot of students under-served by a system w/o sensible quality controls.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Glad to hear that. Just wanted to make sure, you would be surprised how many people I have met who think like that, even in my engineering design/drafting classes I had people complaining about having to learn how to free hand sketch with perspective.

I agree about standardized tests however, having personal experience with charter schools, home school organizations, "regular schools", and middle college high school I would say that about the only thing that is the same among all of them is standardized tests. It may be far from perfect but its the best tool at gauging what material is being taught across such large variation of instruction and school type. Quite literally it standardizes the school systems so that judgement can be made about the classes. Just think about it could you imagine having to deal with a different standard for every school as a person from college admissions. It would be insane, you would need work samples from all applicants and so on. It is necessary, however like all things that are "one-size-fits-all" it is adequate for all but perfect for no one.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Once upon a time a typical high school taught home economics and had a room full of Southbends and an auto shop, no? What got added when these classes were taken away? (Not a rhetorical question)

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

At my school, the "vocational" classes got centralized between several schools. Students that were on a college prep course took course at the regular school. Students on the vocational track were required to take certain mandated courses during the morning (english, math, and history/government), but were then allowed to go to vocational in the afternoon. (Late 90s timeframe).

I have recently been in a handful of large schools that had auto & body shops at the schools that are all but closed down. Judging by the condition, I would say most of those closed around 2005-ish timeframe. Several FRC teams have taken over these spaces.

This is all anecdotal, but it would seem that the shop classes got the axe as more students moved to College Prep routes, and the funds got tighter.

At the GT intermediate I attended (it also had regularly zoned kids, but we ignored them) the metal shop was removed after a liability lawsuit. All other intermediates followed suit. No such lawsuit has hit the high schools, so their shops are safe for the time being.
I remember my GT teachers telling me how upset they were that they had to teach to the TAKS test for three weeks each year. Didn't matter that we could pass it in our sleep; they'd be fired if they ignored the curriculum. So there's that. AP tests, more so than the SAT, have seemed like good tools to measure success because of the question content. There was a lovely article on engineering in space in my English 3 AP exam, and my World History AP exam required the sort of depth of thought you'd normally see from a really intense brainstorming session. But the article isn't taking that into account; its sole focus is state-mandated tests like STAR and TAKS. Which I think need to be replaced for those who measure a factor above the normal drivel.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

In a hypothetical situation, let's say I was in a state/district/school that forced me to dumb my teaching down to the lowest 25% in order to help the school get more students over a proficiency cut score for a standardized test. I would probably be tempted do one of the following: 1) ignore/break rules until I get fired, 2) move to another state/district/school, 3) quit and go back to engineering. The point: you can drive away teachers if you don't let them teach.

However, I've seen some of the test questions that Iowa is looking at using, and they tend to involve some pretty nice higher level thinking skills. If/when we end up somehow emphasizing those tests more, it is possible that it will actually force better teaching - it depends on how they do it. In my case, I've always been missing feedback from the tests we already do. All we get are the average scores in each subject. That's useless information to me as the teacher. We also are given no information about what's on the tests, because the test makers don't want teachers cheating. I would like to see that situation change. Once we have our set of high school course-specific tests up and running in Iowa, I hope we will have sample exams and concept maps up front to help us plan our teaching, and on the back end we need reports that show how students in our own classes did in each specific content area (not just the overall score). Then I can actually figure out how to change my teaching based on the test results. Otherwise, the entire exercise of testing is masturbatory.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Good question. I can't provide a universal answer (if one exists), but in my high school I think it coincided at least roughly with an increase in computers & tech: mechanical CAD, architectural CAD, biotech, manufacturing, power & energy, transport, video apps, graphic arts & photography. I believe it also coincided with a major expansion the lab science progression: multi-year & AP bio/chem/phys, plus more in-depth environmental/ecology courses. If my own experience is any indication, we also had a somewhat belated uptick in higher-level social science.

Like another poster, the district also has central a vocational-technical education school, as well as a new STEM magnet school.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Remedial classes for those that failed TAKS :rolleyes:

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

I was thinking of responding with something to the effect of "administration that lets academics (or standardized tests) get in the way of a good education". But remedial classes for those that for whatever reason fail standardized tests is a good enough answer...


Actually, I was remembering that in my college, all the sophomores had to sit for a standardized test. Just once, mind you, but as I understand it it was just about a waste of time there because just about everyone in that group could pass it in their sleep. I don't know about the other colleges in the system, though...I also don't know what they could do to you if you didn't pass, though there were remedial courses available--at the time of taking the test, many students were expected to be in Calc 2 or even higher, and the test barely touched Calc 1.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Interesting. Before I jumped ship to a magnet school my local high school had what was once clearly shop space but had since been converted to an art classroom. When my dad was in high school (early 80s) it had still been shop space. We too had a local vocational school, but they scheduled all of the vocational classes during the honors classes so it was impossible to do both. :rollseyes: We did still have middle school woodshop though. That was pretty cool. I'll never forget a bunch of kids didn't want to do one of the projects and Mr. Weatherbee said "Okay by me, but don't come complaining when you fail." -- they did the project. The voc school principal for most of my high school team's existence was really supportive as he thought FIRST was a great way to get honors kids into the voc school since he couldn't get them into regularly scheduled classes. Unfortunately his successor didn't feel the same way.

Maine actually uses the SAT test as their high school standardized testing. We also had to take a science supplement which was a joke. Over 80% of my high school class got a perfect score. I'm not sure AP tests are really a great standardized test either. I got a 5 on AP Calc BC and would not be surprised if I got more than 90% of the test right. I also got a 5 on AP Chemistry and would be very surprised if I got 50% of test correct. :eek:

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

I feel like this is one of the big misunderstandings with these types of tests (sorry, I don't meant to pick on you). It's not ~95% = A = 5, ~85% = B = 4. Yes, A =~ 5 and B =~ 4, but the percentages are (in the case of APs) based on the grades of students in college comparability studies. Depending on the test, your composite score could be 66% and still get a 5.

This is not to say that the scoring setting is necessarily done correctly in all standardized tests.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

To expand on this a bit, I always tell my students about how the company I work for hires. We're a fairly large medical device company... but we contrary to popular assumption, we don't hire a lot of biomedical engineers. It's easier to hire a good mechanical, electrical, or computer engineer and teach him/her the biology they need for the job, than it is to teach a biomedical engineer the in-depth knowledge of a particular engineering discipline they need.

I went to school for Computer Engineering/Computer Science, and kept myself fairly well rounded. My interview process for an internship here years ago went like this: They came on campus to do interviews. I talked with one guy for about half an hour. He asked me to come back to talk with another guy, who then interrupted another interview so a third guy could talk to me as well. They had hundreds of interviews at my school that week, all with engineering students with grades just as good as mine. As an interviewer, seeing "yet another" resume with a 3.8+ GPA doesn't mean much. Making a connection with a student that can communicate well and tell his/her story in a compelling way does. Then I got hired here and spent 1/4 of my time the first year in a classroom learning about the human heart and cardiovascular system. I don't need the in depth information a doctor does... we have doctors consulting with us for that. Rather, I need to know "just enough" to understand what they're saying and translate it into design requirements.

Being a good engineer isn't all about engineering. It's about being able to use engineering for a practical application, and to successfully communicate your research or development results to people who aren't engineers (aka management, marketing, sales, etc).

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Perhaps I am not smart enough to understand the College Board, but it seems like if you only need to get 50% of the test right to be as good as a college student getting an A you are losing a lot of resolution you could be using to separate students.


Absolutely. It seems to me that in most cases what you learn in school really just lays a broad base anyways. For example the project I spent 3 months working on when I was an intern got covered by the professor for about 2 minutes in my flight mechanics class.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

I won't speak for College Board, but I found a good description of their score setting process here. Perhaps it's because resolution can still be useful, even if it's not fed directly into the score?

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

This is a misconception a lot of people have about testing.

If a large percentage of the population is getting 90% and multiple 100% socres, then THAT is where you are losing a lot of resolution. Saturation of data (in this case, 100% scores) means you're really not separating those at the top.

Many people believe the ideal test of subject knowledge should have the median score around 50%. Practically no one should get 100%. There should be a wide range of difficulty to the questions, from fairly easy to extremely difficult. By constructing a test this way, they hope to achieve the "characteristic of discrimination" in the test - which means the results should be able to separate the test takers along the entire spectrum of knowledge and understanding - not have everyone lumped into a tight band.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

So, what you are saying is that tests should not be used to evaluate absolute understanding but understanding relative to a peer group?

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

I would say that depends on the point of a test. A test designed to evaluate how well someone knows a subject (aka most of the tests we take in school) should be designed to evaluate absolute understanding. One used to evaluate the understanding of the population as a whole in order to better direct resources to problem areas should be designed to evaluate understanding compared to a peer group.

Honestly, I've always wondered how much I really got out of my Honors Calc 3 class freshman year of college (trust me, after that I didn't take any more honors classes!). I just don't feel that a 65% in the class, considered an A after the professor curved the grades, really indicates a deep understanding of the subject matter. Of course, the professor couldn't just fail the entire class. That would be as good as admitting that he doesn't know how to teach the subject. Before that class, I had never scored less than 95% in any math class, going all the way back to 1st grade!

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Google norm referenced vs. criterion referenced and you can find when each type would be more useful.

Tests that evaluate relative to peers are useful if you're simply looking for the best people you can bring to your university or company.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Obviously I wasn't in your class, but I've had professors that deliberately treat tests the way Chris mentioned above. I once had a prof hand me a 300/400-level* chemistry exam (this was in CHEM 102) and say 'just do it'. I got an A with something like 33%. But it truly (trust me) challenged us, and the thought we took with it manifested in our answers clearly, even if we didn't understand most of the content. Different people "lightbulbed" at different places/questions, and it really showed each of us what was ahead and showed him just how deeply each student understood the knowledge we did have.

Even for heavily curved classes in which my professor didn't indicate intended acceptable-knowledge test score, I have to feel somewhat confident that my A meant something since I definitely understood the knowledge therein well enough to apply it in many subsequent courses and projects.

*In this case that means a good chemistry senior should score around 95%.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Three classes are studying the same subject, but they have different teachers who give different tests.

Average Test Scores:
Class A: 20%
Class B: 50%
Class C: 80%

Question 1: Which group of students knows its subject the best?

Question 2: Which test was the most cleverly designed?

Answer: we don't know. Any combination of answers to the two questions is possible: it all depends on the questions asked on the tests. The class averages tell us very little.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

Not at all (at least not necessarily). If the test is to cover something you just learned and the test is only on material you just learned, then perhaps 90% should be a typical score for a good student. If the test is to determine your absolute knowledge of the entire subject, then the average should be closer to 50% for a good student. Let's face it - subjects are very broad and you only get a glimpse of it in your studies.

Here's an example:

Let's say I'm hiring for an advanced development position in signal processing. In order to determine knowledge, we will use a written test.

Let's say everyone that applies gets 90%+ on the test and there are a lot of 100% scores. Do I really believe that there are that many people that know 90% of all signal processing knowledge. There's no way that is true. Time to write a new test.

If you're trying to determine absolute knowledge of a subject, then ideally on that test only the elite PhD's who are at the top of the field should get 100% (if they're really, really good). PhD's who are marginal should probably score 85%, showing they know maybe 85% of the field of knowledge. People with master's degrees you would expect to score in the 65 - 85% range. Good bachelor's degree candidates would be expected to get maybe 50%.

The point is, just because the bachelor's candidate scores 50%, that doesn't make him an idiot or a bad candidate for a lot of jobs. It just means he doesn't have PhD level knowledge, but that's okay - we expect that. But if the bachelor's candidate came in and scored 85%, then you know he may be brilliant. You would have never found that with the test where everyone scores 95% or better.

If the goal is to determine if your knowledge is "good enough", then the test where many candidates score 90% is appropriate. If your goal is to determine the absolute level of knowledge of a subject, then the having everyone score 90% isn't realistic because very few people know 90% about any subject (unless the subject is very small and limited).

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

So maybe I AM just too dumb to understand the college board! :D

I totally understand the logic of everyone getting a near 100 makes it difficult to understand who knows the material. The guy who taught my combustion class gave fairly easy tests -- you had to think hard, but if you understood the core concepts you could usually tease out the answer. On the flip side though, if you made a dumb math mistake (and I'm pretty good at those) you might lose 10 points and be near the median score even if you knew all the material. I actually liked really hard tests because even if I got a 50 I usually beat the class average and rode the curve to victory.

I still think though in the particular case of the Chemistry AP if I can get 50% of the test correct and be in the top 15% of the country, they are setting the bar too low or the test is too hard. I think you are absolutely right in the broader sense of giving tests though.

What does this mean? I know I've seen it used on CD before, but I'm just not sure what the lesson is.

Re: Learning by Making Rockets & Robots
 

I actually learned it from my dad...
I'm going to give a couple of definitions that may help, then explain what it means.

Academics: class work, including homework, projects, tests, quizzes, and anything else that has a grade from school.

Good education: Extracurricular activities (say, along the lines of FIRST, band, you get the idea), academics, family chats about life, the universe, and everything--stuff like that.

Academics can fit into a good education, as noted. However, in some cases, for whatever reason the academics are allowed to essentially take over the entire "good education" part. As an example, figure a straight-A student who wants to join the school's FRC team, but is told that he can't because he'll hurt his grades (and thus his chances for college, profession, etc.) Let's also figure that the same is told for any other extra-curricular. That's a rather extreme example of letting academics get in the way of a good education. Or, to use another, semi-related phrasing, not seeing the forest for the trees. (And, in this particular example, hurting the grades by a point or less each may not do anything to future chances.)

Don't get me wrong--the grades are important. But they aren't the be-all and end-all of going to school. Part of that education is the extracurriculars. Where else are you going to apply that knowledge you just gained in school?

Here here. The real problem with tests of any sort is that they don't test real world application. So while they serve a purpose, acing a test isn't the same as designing a nested-axle belt-driven transmission. Realistically, there ought to be both in schools, but so many extracurriculars are being dropped that you'd think only academics matter.