Re: CAT 6 Questions

["Karen Canty" <kvscanty@pacbell.net>]

George,

So you're actually able to SEE questions on the test?  Before, after or
during?

Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org [mailto:arn-l-owner@interversity.org]
On Behalf Of George Sheridan
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2003 2:56 PM
To: ca-resisters@interversity.org; arn-l@interversity.org
Subject: [arn-l] CAT 6 Questions

Will principals seeking higher test scores order teachers to instruct
their 
students in the use of jigsaw puzzles? It seems unlikely, but one of the

questions on CAT 6 requires students to choose the correct puzzle piece
to 
fill a gap in a jigsaw puzzle. James Popham, professor emeritus at UCLA,

could cite this question as one example among many of norm-referenced
tests 
basing scores on children's natural talents or background knowledge
rather 
than on their mastery of the curriculum.

Every student in my school who's been to Apple Hill, El Dorado County's 
agri-tourism center, is in danger of missing another question on the
math 
section of the CAT 6. Second-grade students are shown a picture of a 
vegetable and asked to choose the best way to determine its sale price.
I 
think every one of my students is familiar with this vegetable.

A thermometer is pretty clearly not the correct choice, and a produce
scale 
is pretty clearly the expected answer, since vegetables are often sold
by 
weight.  But in our area this particular vegetable is sometimes sold by 
diameter. So a measuring tape wrapped about the vegetable's equator,
which 
the test authors may have assumed to be a nonsensical answer, may be the

"best" answer - that is, the answer that most corresponds with the
reality 
these children have experienced.

(There is a clue in the test booklet, but not in the directions. If 
children look at the accompanying picture, they will see a small sign
with 
a price per pound. But this test is administered orally and students are

instructed to listen to the directions. They are not instructed to look
at 
the picture, and that is not required for all other problems.) The test 
makers might argue that the experience of buying vegetables by the pound
is 
so universal that students ought to know that would be the best choice.
But 
in our supermarkets, the scale at the checkout counter is integrated
with 
the counter top. And produce is also sold by the head, by the bunch, by
the 
box or sack, and by the dozen. There may be many children who have never

seen a parent or store clerk use a hanging produce scale. In any case, 
teaching that particular use of the scale is not necessarily part of our

curriculum in second grade.

Correctly answering several other problems on this short (thirty-five 
minutes) high-stakes test seems to depend more on abilities children
bring 
to school than on anything the curriculum or the instructor would be 
expected to provide. In one, a shape is tilted at an angle and about
half 
covered, so that only a portion is visible. Children are to decide which

regular polygon is concealed. Will teachers begin painting pattern
blocks 
black and holding up corners to sharpen children's perceptions of
polygons?

A different problem calls for students to place a number in the correct 
position in a sequence having several blanks. That seems pretty 
straightforward, except that the sequence counts up from the bottom row,

while the identifying letters count down from the top row. When children

have just spent their primary years learning to read left-to-right, 
top-to-bottom, why would they be expected to count up from the bottom, 
except to make the problem more difficult and to spread out scores?


George Sheridan

This past week my second graders took the CAT 6, our new norm-referenced

test in California, in addition to the California Standards Test, for a 
total of about seven and a half hours of testing. (The California
Standards 
Tests are untimed, but they are estimated to be six fifty-minute
sessions.)


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