“D-minus? But I memorized EVERYTHING!” [View All]

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“D-minus? But I memorized EVERYTHING!”

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Today’s 10th grade students have spent their entire schooling under the shadow of No Child Left Behind. Predictably, these students often subscribe to the notion that if good teaching is happening, then all students will score highly on exams. A bell-curve grade distribution is, to them, evidence of failed teaching.

Often, today’s teens describe good teaching as a three step process: 1) teacher tells students exactly what is on the exam; 2) students memorize everything; and 3) students regurgitate the “right” answers and everyone gets an “A”.

Many students have learned to equate learning with test preparation. To them, learning means memorizing information and parroting it back on the test. Last week’s biology exam covered cellular transport processes – diffusion, osmosis, and so forth. I know all of my students could say “osmosis is the diffusion of water across a selectively permeable membrane.” Then again, so could a parrot. And the D-minus student and the parrot would likely have equal comprehension of what they were saying.

I write exams such that about 60% of the questions fall in the “knowledge” level of cognitive function (Mr. Gates, look up “Bloom’s Taxonomy”). The remaining 40% of questions require some higher-order thinking skills, and by design appear quite mysterious to the student who simply “memorized everything.” I analyzed this particular exam and found it contained exactly 60% knowledge-level questions. 22% of the questions were “comprehension” level, 10% “application”, and the remaining 8% were “analysis” level or above.

more:

http://www.edvoices.com/blog/2010/10/12/%e2%80%9cd-minus-but-i-memorized-everything%e2%80%9d/

Bolding is mine to point out the result of excessive standardized testing on kids.