EVEN this early, some schools in the country already conduct pre-admissions tests for the college level.
This means all students in such schools, while busily coping with their requirements to pass senior high successfully, will also need to define their career choices.
Equally, their guidance offices go on overdrive, towards assisting the graduating seniors about crystal-clear college courses to pursue.
Which stimulates our curiosity about how assessment of learning and for learning is undertaken at the classroom level. The same curiosity acts up as we reflect on dismal results in some recent professional board examinations.
While the shift from national testing to institutional testing has been welcomed, academic papers have nevertheless stressed that in some selected colleges and universities, learning assessment has not improved much.
Teachers in such institutions hardly went beyond measuring remembering and understanding skills. Very seldom did they attempt to measure and assess application, analysis and synthesis, and evaluation skills.
The scenario is no better in foreign shores. In the US, colleges and universities still debate over the continued use of standardized admission tests like SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) or ACT (American College Testing), or going test-optional.
Already, accusations range from SAT’s being biased against gender, race and color.
But whether the disadvantages outweigh the benefits is another matter.
Going test-optional means exercising scrutiny and care not just on the proper
construction of assessment tools, but also on the correct use and administration.
A high school, for instance, has admitted that it allowed students to take the SAT many times and allowed them as well to choose which combined scores were to be submitted to colleges for consideration. Of course, the receiving colleges were clueless.
Still, others contend that SAT is a very convenient short-cut tool for comparing students. So, debates continue, spelling into observations “why good students write bad college essays,” or why bright students give poor answers. Note these answers from 16-year-old students collated from their SAT papers.
Name the four seasons. “Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.”
How is dew formed? “The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.”
What causes the tides in the ocean? “The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon because there is no water there, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.”
What does varicose mean? “Nearby.”…. What does Caesarian Section mean? “It’s a district in Rome.”…. What is a seizure? “A Roman emperor.”…. What is a turbine?
“Something an Arab wears on his head.”…. Name a major disease associated with cigarettes. “Premature death.”
Often, a word of caution is raised--“Don’t laugh too hard; one of these students might become US President someday.”
Perhaps this one. Asked what is a terminal illness, he answered “When you are like sick at the airport.”
Or this one, to the question “What does the word ‘benign’ mean?” The answer: “What you will be after you be eight.”
Better still, this one. When asked how one can delay the souring of milk, he answered “Keep it in the cow.”
(lelani.echaves@gmail.com)