I'm glad that you do participate in these discussions. You bring a lot of thought and sanity to this forum.

more even.
I bet, on a concious or unconcious level, the way he pokes a stick at people with his knowledge that might be interpreted as lacking and idiotic...

he does spawn some reactions.

With his big opening statements he gets the ball rolling.

and that is cool, for at the end of the thread, i have learned something even if i have not participated in the discussion.

:06:

And that sounds like it would be a massive step in the right direction for American schools. You get in if you score well enough to get in. No non-qual evaluations, no satellite schools, no industry.

If I post pornographic images I'll get a reaction. If I post a rant about Jews I'll get a reaction. If I post links to pirate websites I'll get a reaction.

A reaction is not always a good thing.

And no huge business of overpriced qualification test prepping courses which people pay an arm and leg for just to force themselves to actually read those test books even once and in some rare cases learn to write a half sensible essay. Though being literate doesn't always seem to be a requirement of getting in a Finnish university from what I have gathered, so perhaps they knew it before they participated in a course.

Absolutely. The standard SAT prices at $50.00 US (foreigners get to pay $63.00 US). There are also a series of SAT prep books that range in cost from $10-$15 US, and even a practice SAT that you can take for $50.00 too.

When graduation comes around, and new teachers are looking to be certified, they get to take the PRAXIS series of tests. Depending on your content area, that will be between six and ten individual exams, which are priced at $85.00 US per test. Yes, per test. If you have to reschedule, you pay another $30.00 US. Scores are available digitally, but if you want an official paper copy of the scores, which all states require for certification, you can pay another $15.00 US processing fee per score.

Yeah, something's wrong with the program.

EDIT: Oh never mind, they've changed the prices. Not all tests are $85. Some are a whole lot more now. Check out the link for details:

http://www.ets.org/praxis/about/fees

The music exams are now up to $139.00 each, and you need all three of them for certification, in addition to the numerous general exams. Nice.

I see what you mean, and i also understand you have gotten my message.
Good Job.

so if you are good enough, and do not have what it takes to get the test and paper you need to get a job...

Ur fudged.

and without these Certs your previous Graduation is useless because incomplete to become a teacher.


Therefor education is tied to money from A to Z.
...:huh:

seriously o_O

Man, that is rich. You must be one of the most self-righteous people I ever stumbled over.

In your own words: before you lecture others to stop playing games and to argue honestly from the start, learn to follow your own advise.

IIRC, and I may be wrong on this since it has been some time since I've sat an exam other than the odd H&S course, but the primary reason, or at least one of the primary reasons behind the multiple choice exam is that it is generally marked by computers. It's a bit like, in the UK, when you buy a lottery ticket, you ink the appropriate box and the machine scans it and inputs the numbers to print the ticket, and then you win sod all. There was once a time when teachers would use a see-through bit of paper with the wrong answers inked out and then overlay it on the paper to see what questions were answered incorrectly or correctly. I think these were on practice papers which are, IIRC, just copies of previous exams.

There's still a human element in it, I believe that the marking process is over-seen by a human factor, however otherwise I think it is mainly computer fed. Obviously there are still exams that require proper written answers or drawings, and there is also coursework, so that's not done by computers.

In regards to meeting quotas, I am reminded of last years GCSE English fiasco in which some students took the exam in January 2012 and some in June. When the results for the exams in January came through it was decided by the exam boards that too many students were going to get C or above and so they pushed the boundary up and there was a qualification gulf between those who took the exam in January and those who took it in June.

Here's a BBC link from the time:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20175633

So there are definitely 'quotas' there which the exam boards feel that they are under pressure to meet, errors in exam papers are not uncommon (my GCSE Geography paper came with an extra page correcting a question on it) but the 2012 fiasco was the first time they'd been caught out by it. Although there have been accusations over the years that exams are too easy because the government is pressuring the exam boards to maintain a good rate of grades to meet figures.

At the end of the day though, in the UK, grades are becoming increasingly meaningless, the job market has shrivelled, particularly in my local area, so University leavers find themselves stocking supermarket shelves. There has been, in recent years, an increase in moves towards bringing back apprenticeships and make education more practical towards engaging school and university leavers into the workplace instead of the jobcenter.
Unfortunately in any economic downturn it's the young and old who cop it first, the young can't get in, and the elderly get booted out and anyone else in the middle has to fight each other to get a job while the companies chortle with glee because they can treat their employees however they like because there will always be a replacement to fill the gap.

It's a bad situation, but we're in a recession, that's how it goes, you just have to hang on until the boom times return.

You're sort of fudged, but you can pay for the test again and take it a second time. You can keep paying and taking the test until you pass it. The results don't show how many times you took it, only what your best score was. And so all those people that got into schools that shouldn't have and are passed through classes they should have failed can, in the end, take those tests until they get the results they want. The colleges get rich, the test companies get rich, the prep companies get rich. And society gets people that hold degrees and certifications who are ill prepared for their chosen work.

The same thing happens with the SAT (the standardized test for college admission). You can take the test as many times as you want, provided you pay for it each time. The standard practice in the US is for students to take the practice SAT (PSAT) in the fall of their junior year of high school, and then the regular SAT in the spring of their junior year and twice in the fall of their senior year. Then they take the best scores from those three tests and use that to apply.

And work every day to make the boom times come back!:rock:

Err, wait? Does that mean you have to take those test, and therefore are required to pay those sums? Or are they sort of voluntary like having your gangrene suffering leg operated is also voluntary?

Enough with the polemics, Skybird. You knew what you were doing from the first post here. You do it all the time. All I've done is to expose you here for what you are.

Wouldn't it achieve the same result much better if they just outright used the Gaussian distribution? That's how it works in our matriculation exams, at least. You can (technically) get 48 out of 50 points and still not get the best grades if certain number of students have 49 or 50 points. Sometimes students see difficult exam questions as a mixed blessing since it also means that the requirements for the best grades will likely also be lower if not enough people can get the maximum scores.