Lets talk about education

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am for free education for those that can pass a reasonable entrance exam. I am for free tutoring to train them to pass the exam.
But the student must be motivated by a desire to actually LEARN.

The pass rate in remedial English in my college was about 40%, In math it was around 25%.

One reason students fail to learn is the multiple choice exam, in which the student is not asked to actually demonstrate the knowledge of the subject, but to choose between three to five multiple choice answers. Teachers love these, as they can grade a whole class of them in under 20 minutes with a Scantron machine.

The College had an "Honor Code" which meant that all students signed a paper promising not to cheat, copy or plagiarize. So the instructor would pass out an identical test and answer sheet to the entire class and then walk out of the room. The students cheated like bandits. If you assigned a term paper, one person would download some drivel from the Internet and print it out, and fifteen other students would submit the same paper. The slogan was "he can't fail all of us".

I never gave multiple choice or true false exams. I gave a different topic to each student and anyone turning in a report on someone else's topic got an F.

[kimba1]

Low pass rate despite cheating and on multiple choice. It seems to support my doubts about entry requirements in college

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am really, really good at multiple choice exams.

I scored in the 99th percentile on the Spanish section of the GRE's the second time I took it. That means I got a perfect score. There were some questions about literature that I did not know, but I seem to have guessed them right.

I scored 89% on the National Teacher Exam without taking any basic education courses. I did take methodology and ed psyche courses.  I just got an NTE Test preparation book with 2000 questions and studied it for a month.

Multiple choice tests do test something. The test one's ability to separate bogus answers from accurate ones far more than subject matter.

[kimba1]

O know somebody else can do that i was studying my Aplus exam and quiz a secretary some of my test and she got it all right and had zero knowledge in computers. She just said it seemed like the right answers.

I'm starting to thing something in British education has something that is missing here in the states. Because a friend of mine has the same ability and he's from hong kong also

[Xavier_Onassis]

Multiple choice tests are seriously overrated. They use them because they are easy to grade. Bad handwriting is not a factor when bubbling in answers.

[kimba1]

And now handwriting is almost gone. I it's needed just to make print readable. I cant prove it but I think if you got legible script you'll get readable print writing .