With fifth-grade test now revealed, New York's tougher new reading exams set students up to fail

[pnwmom]

39. It's not a question of having things spelled out for you.

It's a question of LOGIC and PRECISION. The same quality that might make a student a future lawyer or scientist, for example, might make it frustrating to choose the fourth option, since there's nothing in the information provided that would support the idea that MANY companies don't have their own wind tunnels.

I always did well on the tests, because I was able to think like a test-writer, I suppose. But I have known many gifted people who did not. My local newspaper once printed some sample "word questions" from a 7th grade math test, and the two engineering PhD's in the room with me insisted the questions couldn't be answered because of how they were worded. I told them to pretend they were taking the test and pick something. They chose the "incorrect" answer and I guessed the "correct" one. Sometimes students get wrong answers on these tests because they don't know enough, sometimes they know too much, and sometimes the tests are just poorly designed.

Here's another example of a poorly designed question: it was a vocabulary comprehension question about the word "camouflage." It was something about toothpicks in the grass. Well, I have a color blind son who can't see green and I instantly knew that the question wouldn't work for him -- and the almost 10% of other boys who are! So I called up the State and found out that no one had ever screened the questions to make sure they were appropriate for color-blind kids. Of course not! And I bet they still don't.