Take This Test (Please)
These five test questions may explain why American students score lower than their counterparts in most other advanced nations. The first is a sample problem offered by the University of Wisconsin/Oshkosh [1] to high school math teachers. It was designed with the stated goal of ‘Closing the Math Achievement Gap’:
Jack shot a deer that weighted (sic) 321 pounds. Tom shot a deer that weighed 289 pounds. How much more did Jack’s deer weigh then (sic) Tom’s deer?
Basic subtraction in high school? The second comes from TeacherVision, part of Pearson, the giant testing company [2] :
Linda is paddling upstream in a canoe. She can travel 2 miles upstream in 45 minutes. After this strenuous exercise she must rest for 15 minutes. While she is resting, the canoe floats downstream ½ mile. How long will it take Linda to travel upstream in this manner?
While the second problem does not contain language errors, its premise is questionable. Will some students be distracted by Linda’s cluelessness? Won’t they ask themselves how long it will take her to figure out that she should grab hold of a branch while she’s resting in order to keep from floating back down the river? What’s the not-so-subtle subtext? That girls don’t belong in canoes? That girls are dumb?
And I found this on a high school math test in Oregon:
There are 6 snakes in a certain valley. The population doubles every year. In how many
