The Smartest Kids in the World Read Online Free Page A
Author: Amanda Ripley
the law firms and lobbyists.
In the elevator, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually taken a test in fifteen years. This could be embarrassing. I gave myself a quick pop quiz. What was the quadratic formula? What was the value of pi? Nothing came to mind. The elevator doors opened.
A nice young woman who had been ordered to babysit me showed me to an office. She laid out a pencil, a calculator, and a test booklet on a table. She read the official directions aloud, explaining that the PISA was designed to find out “what you’ve been learning and what school is like for you.”
For the next two hours, I answered sixty-one questions about math, reading, and science. Since certain questions could reappear in later versions of the test, the PISA people made me promise not to reveal the exact questions. I can, however, share similar examples from past PISA tests and other sample questions that PISA has agreed to make public. Like this math question:
A TV reporter showed this graph and said: “The graph shows that there is a huge increase in the number of robberies from 1998 to 1999.”
Do you consider the reporter’s statement to be a reasonable interpretation of the graph? Give an explanation to support your answer.
Several questions like this one asked for my opinion, followed by rows of blank lines for writing my answer; that was odd. Since when did a standardized test care about anyone’s opinion?
Other questions reminded me of problems I’d encountered as an adult—having to decipher the fine print of a health-care policy before choosing it, or comparing the fees of checking accounts offered by competing banks. It seemed more like a test of life skills than school skills.
All the math formulas were provided, thank God, including the value of pi. But I noticed that I had to really think about my answers. When I tried to speed through a math section, I had to go back and erase several answers.
One sample reading question featured a companyflu-shot notice—thekind of bland announcement you might find hanging on the bulletin board at your job. The flyer, designed by an employee named Fiona, was not remarkable in any way. Just like a real HR flyer! The test asked for an analysis of Fiona’s work:
Fiona wanted the style of this information sheet to be friendly and encouraging. Do you think she succeeded? Explain your answer by referring in detail to the layout, style of writing, pictures or other graphics.
For me, the science section was the trickiest. I resorted to guessing more than once. Many of the questions were about everyday science you might use in real life. What happened to your muscles when you exercised? Which foods were high invitamin C?
I finished with about twenty minutes to spare. Unlike a real student, I got to grade my own test. It took about an hour, since each answer could receive zero, full, or partial credit, depending on how close it came to the many options listed in the answer key. Smart tests usually had to be graded by humans, at least in part, which is what made them expensive and rare.
For the question about robberies, full credit was given for any version of ten different possible answers, as long as the answer was basically no —and included a critique of the distorted graph, which didn’t start at 0, or pointed out that the increase in robberies was actually fairly small on a percentage basis. (Only about one-third of participants in Finland, Korea, and the United States got this question right, by the way.)
For the question about the flu-shot flyer, there was no one right answer. Yes or no, the only way to get full credit was to defend your opinion by citing at least one specific feature of the flyer and evaluating it in detail. It wasn’t enough to merely repeat that the style was “friendly” and “encouraging;” those words were already included in the question. “Interesting,” “easy to read,” and “clear” were consideredtoo vague. The assessment had to
In the elevator, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually taken a test in fifteen years. This could be embarrassing. I gave myself a quick pop quiz. What was the quadratic formula? What was the value of pi? Nothing came to mind. The elevator doors opened.
A nice young woman who had been ordered to babysit me showed me to an office. She laid out a pencil, a calculator, and a test booklet on a table. She read the official directions aloud, explaining that the PISA was designed to find out “what you’ve been learning and what school is like for you.”
For the next two hours, I answered sixty-one questions about math, reading, and science. Since certain questions could reappear in later versions of the test, the PISA people made me promise not to reveal the exact questions. I can, however, share similar examples from past PISA tests and other sample questions that PISA has agreed to make public. Like this math question:
A TV reporter showed this graph and said: “The graph shows that there is a huge increase in the number of robberies from 1998 to 1999.”
Do you consider the reporter’s statement to be a reasonable interpretation of the graph? Give an explanation to support your answer.
Several questions like this one asked for my opinion, followed by rows of blank lines for writing my answer; that was odd. Since when did a standardized test care about anyone’s opinion?
Other questions reminded me of problems I’d encountered as an adult—having to decipher the fine print of a health-care policy before choosing it, or comparing the fees of checking accounts offered by competing banks. It seemed more like a test of life skills than school skills.
All the math formulas were provided, thank God, including the value of pi. But I noticed that I had to really think about my answers. When I tried to speed through a math section, I had to go back and erase several answers.
One sample reading question featured a companyflu-shot notice—thekind of bland announcement you might find hanging on the bulletin board at your job. The flyer, designed by an employee named Fiona, was not remarkable in any way. Just like a real HR flyer! The test asked for an analysis of Fiona’s work:
Fiona wanted the style of this information sheet to be friendly and encouraging. Do you think she succeeded? Explain your answer by referring in detail to the layout, style of writing, pictures or other graphics.
For me, the science section was the trickiest. I resorted to guessing more than once. Many of the questions were about everyday science you might use in real life. What happened to your muscles when you exercised? Which foods were high invitamin C?
I finished with about twenty minutes to spare. Unlike a real student, I got to grade my own test. It took about an hour, since each answer could receive zero, full, or partial credit, depending on how close it came to the many options listed in the answer key. Smart tests usually had to be graded by humans, at least in part, which is what made them expensive and rare.
For the question about robberies, full credit was given for any version of ten different possible answers, as long as the answer was basically no —and included a critique of the distorted graph, which didn’t start at 0, or pointed out that the increase in robberies was actually fairly small on a percentage basis. (Only about one-third of participants in Finland, Korea, and the United States got this question right, by the way.)
For the question about the flu-shot flyer, there was no one right answer. Yes or no, the only way to get full credit was to defend your opinion by citing at least one specific feature of the flyer and evaluating it in detail. It wasn’t enough to merely repeat that the style was “friendly” and “encouraging;” those words were already included in the question. “Interesting,” “easy to read,” and “clear” were consideredtoo vague. The assessment had to
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