Testing smarts?

Question

Are home schoolers smarter because they score higher on tests?

Dose a test actually show the smarts of a person?

Some people are very smart but they don't test well. Does that make them not as educated?

Answer 1

Standardized tests do not actually show how smart a person is.  They show if a person has retained what they have been taught long enough to take the test.  They also show if a person has learned test taking skills.  As someone else has mentioned, there are different types of intelligence and most can not be measured by a standardized test.

Standardized tests are also usually very biased towards white middle-class experiences.  They are also usually riddled with badly worded questions which can be confusing even for adults.  David Albert has a great chapter on standardized testing in his book Homeschooling and the Voyage of Self-Discovery.

From personal experience, I bought an ACT prep book to be ready to take the ACT in high school.  The first paragraph in the math section pretty much said "the ACT will expect you to use math that you have not done since the 5th grade" and proceeded to review 5th grade math, which I did need to review after spending my high school years in the abstract worlds of algebra, geometry, and calculus.  The one chapter of my ACT prep book that I overlooked due to laziness was the one about science.  Science was the only area of my ACT that I kind of bombed despite having been placed a year ahead of my class in honors science courses throughout high school.  I can't help wondering if I would have done better than a 30 if I had reviewed the science section in my prep book.  And in college I met several people in the honors dorm I lived in who were academically brilliant but didn't have the common sense that God gave a horse's hind end.

I don't believe that standardized testing necessarily reflects intelligence or education.  However,  I do plan to have my children take tests when they are older to learn testing skills since colleges rely heavily on standardized tests, especially for homeschoolers.

Answer 2

I don't think a test can tell you that your smart or not. Like you said somebody can be a very smart person but they just might not be a good test taker. Also, if somebody drills facts into their head and then takes a test and scores high that doesn't neccesarily mean they understood whatever they were studying. It just means they were memorizing it...I'm not sure if what I'm saying makes much sense, but I hope it does!

Answer 3

Good question about the smart but not testing well.  The importance that is put on testing in public school is one reason that we home school.   The entire school system operates on making sure that the end of grade test prove that the students have learned.  The schools teach the test to make sure that they, the schools, meet the expectations that are put on them by the government.   The teachers are forced to stick with a curriculum and schedule and do not have time for spontaneous, interest led learning.  Our son takes the test only because it is a state regulation.   We are pleasantly surprised by his scores every year.  It is a much different story than when he was in public school and the teachers threatened 'retaining' every year but then passed him no matter what score he made on the EOG.

No, test do not show the smarts of a person.  Most homeschoolers do not put much emphasis on test results.  We pull out the statistics only when we are attacked by anti-homeschool people.

Answer 4

Depends on the test, but by and large tests are reasonably accurate.

They present MATH problems and you have to solve there.

That is not MULITPLE GUESS there is ONLY one right answer.

If I want to test your skills in math I go from fractions to decimals and then I start taking out constants and use variables and then I require factoring and simplication and then I do geometry problems about area and then I do trig problems about angles, tangents, chords and then I move in Calculus.

It's YOUR job as the test taker to decide if you know it or move on.  If you have time you can go back to a question.

Reading comprehension is, unfortunately, based on a understanding of NATIVE LANGAUGE and yes, people who are foreign who think in a foreign langauge can goof up on this, but the TEST is for the NATIVE COUNTRY.

I mean if I wrote the test out in Russian, could you answer a single question!

So a test of say a Hispanic student who fails miserably the reading part indicates they need more work in thinking in English.

Let's get something clear here, CAL TECH and MIT does not teach Bilingually to students from India.

They expect students from India to have a high level of English comprehension.

Do not expect the ROAD SIGNS in INDIA to have ENGLISH SUBTITLES if you go there.

In Israel all street signs and road signs are in HEBREW

It was a Guatamalan nurse in America who first introduced me to the concept of THINKING IN ENGLISH AMERICAN vs. THINKING IN GUATAMALAN SOUTH AMERICAN

And there is a DIFFERENCE.

She is not only BI-LINGUAL, she is BI-CULTURAL

Tests reflect CULTURE as well as LANGUAGE

And thus they give a true indication of how mastering you are of something.

Answer 5

I think that if the testing showed public schoolers to be ahead of home schoolers, this question would not have been asked.

Answer 6

Testing measures little or nothing that has to do with a persons real abilities.

Testing is only a very small snap shot of temporary knowledge.

If a person scores well on a test, it is because they studied subject material that they knew they would be tested on, and they answer the questions.

If the material covered on the test does not apply to their daily life, or they do not revisit the material, and put it to practical use any other time, it will soon be forgotten.

Test them again a few weeks later, and than a few months later, and you will see significant drops in the test scores because the knowledge needed to pass the test has been forgotten.

When people study to pass a test their motivation is to pass the test, rather than retaining the information long term, so no, tests measure very little, and are a poor measuring stick of ones true abilities.

Some people are natural test takers others are stinky at it.

Tests are okay if all you want to do is pre-test before starting a program to find out what a person all ready knows, so you do not have to waste time, but can go ahead with more advanced material.

Educated people are those who can actually apply what they have learned, and built upon that knowledge base.

More often than not that kind of knowledge is gained by experience, or by being in an internship/apprenticeship program to give you practical skills; book knowledge is only a very minute part of an actual education.

Answer 7

There are many types of intelligence.  Here's a Wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_m...

Also, more and more gifted, especially profoundly gifted, students are being homeschooled because it's the only educational setting that works well for them.  So they may make standardized testing scores of the HS'ed look better.

The demographics of most homeschoolers are *way* different than public, or even private schoolers.  That has a HUGE affect on the outcomes of their education when you look at a group as a whole.

Statistics can be skewed in anyway they can be spun.

A very generalized statement would be that most, not all, HS'ers are great at knowing *how* to learn, which makes them appear much smarter.  They've been given the tools, and the time, to develop that skill.