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Monday, December 24, 2007
Are You Smarter Than A 12th-Grader?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For a while now, I’ve been curious about just how difficult the state’s End of Course Tests are — and how I personally might score on them.
You may recall that these are the exams the State Board of Education is considering using as the new high school diploma tests.
Currently, the standardized assessments are given at the end of eight high school courses (hence, the name) and the results count as 15 percent of a student’s final grade.
Teenagers generally fare far worse on the EOCTs than on the Georgia High School Graduation Tests. And they do particularly poorly in economics, which has among the lowest passing rates of all the end-of-course exams. This past spring, 33 percent of Georgia public school students who took the exam (many of them 12th graders) flunked.
So I decided to go ahead and take the economics test to see what all the fuss was about. (One caveat: The only practice exam available to the public is from 2004.)
Now, I haven’t taken economics since college (many, many moons ago), and that was only an introductory course. So I think it’s safe to say that I didn’t have an unfair advantage — especially because economics is not my strong suit.
How did I do?
I got a whopping 75 percent correct! And I took the exam in exactly 57 minutes, even though students would have gotten two hours. Not bad, if I do say so myself.
OK, now you try. Then, while you’re gloating over your own score, ask yourself: How come so many kids fail this test? Or any of the other subject tests for that matter.
I mean, is the state really asking students to do too much?
