2003-11-17 - 2:24 p.m.

No religous diatribe today.

No complaining about things in the SCA.

Not even a rant about how the Republicans are ruining our country.

Nope, today's rant is about the Educational Testing Service, how their tests are insane, and how their monopolistic practices are leading to the demise of American Education.

So fans of bubble tests and number 2 lead pencils should probably move on.

See, Saturday morning I took my PRAXIS II Mathematics Content Knowledge examination (PRAXIS 0061 for those of you scoring at home).

This test is required of everyone wishing to teach Mathematics at the secondary school level (fundamentally, High School math). So, does this test cover the math that you're going to teach? Is there algebra, basic geometry, business math, or maybe even a smattering of Calculus I on there?

Why no, no there isn't. Instead, this test tests College Math. Stuff like analytic geometry, linear mathematics, complex statistics, matrix algebra...the stuff that I wasn't taught until my Junior year of College. Stuff that I wouldn't be teaching, even if I was doing AAAAAAAP classes at the local high school.

Math that I haven't touched in 10 years.

But that's not even my main bitch, because I can understand a degree of "You need to know more about the subject area than the level you're teaching at." It's the same logic that says you have to be a PhD to teach Freshman Political Science in College.

No, my bitch is the fact that I had to pay $150 for this lovely two hour examination, as well as buy a new calculator ($140), a study guide ($45), and sacrifice a Saturday of my life.

First, let's examine what I got for my $150. I got to take a 50 question, multiple choice, standardized test on the subject area. This test was printed on a 16 page booklet of newsprint quality paper, which I didn't get to keep. I wasn't issued with scratch paper, I had to do my work *in* the book, which didn't bother to provide adequate white space.

My estimate for how much it would cost to print this book, $5. And that's being generous.

Okay, so there's $145 more to account for. Well, let's see...presumably I had to pay for the time of the Proctor of the test. He deserves a reasonable wage like the rest of us...Hell, let's overpay him to the tune of $50/hour, and his two assistants get $25/hour.

The test ran from 7:30 AM to 11:00. Let's assume they had to be there an hour early and stay an hour late, so it's 6:30 to noon. That'd be 5.5 hours, at $100/hour for all three of em, so $550.

Divide that by the 50 of us they shoehorned into the classroom, and it comes out to $11 each. Sofar, we've spent $16 of our $150.

Okay, now, I will admit they have to incur expenses to score the test. They use an automated machine to do this. I'm going to assume it's roughly equivalent to the scanning machines they use to count votes on those punch-card elections...those cost $50,000 each.

But, those machines handle not just the PRAXIS, but the SAT, ACT, GRE, and gosh knows how many others. And it's not like they throw the machine away after the test is over. Let's assume $10 to run the machine to score my exam. That's probably generous, but hey, that's alright.

They had to write the test. Okay, let's see...if/when I'm teaching math, I'll get a salary of $33,000 a year to teach, and included in that will be designing at least 4 or 5 examinations of probably roughly equivalent size. It can't cost more than $1000 to write a 50 question test, and they use it for 10,000 or more testtakers in a given year...so that's 10 cents. Let's up it to $5.

I had to register over the phone. Okay, I know how much it costs to run a call center...about $5 per call.

They'll be spending money on postage to mail me my results...$1 there.

I can't think of any other way they'd be spending money on the test, and I'm still on the south side of $50.

Where'd the rest go?

I know one place it certainly doesn't go...calculator certification.

See...this test requires that you bring a graphing calculator. However, said calculator has to meet a set of guidelines, it can't have a QWERTY keyboard, it can't be programmable, it can't make noises, etc.

I had a calculator, but it was programmable. I wasn't sure I could bring it, so I called and asked (Okay, so another $5 for this call...still nowhere near $150). They *couldn't* tell me if it was legal under their guidelines or not. All they could say was "Well, it might be okay, the proctor gets to make the final determination if there's an issue". But if I had a bad calculator and wasn't allowed to use it, they wouldnt' have standby calculators to lend me, nor could I reschedule for another testing session.

So, I had to go out and buy a new calculator (the TI 83+ silver edition, $134 at my local best buy...on the plus side, it can practically double as a PDA), which was certified for use on the SAT and GRE...PRAXIS wasn't mentioned, but I figured it would be okay.

Oh, it was programmable, btw. And the proctor didn't even give it a second glance. I also know there were at least three others in the room with the same calculator.

Now, about the test itself. This was your basic multiple choice examination, two hours to complete. But it wasn't questions like "Solve for X in 3x + 5 = 16" or even "Calculate the integral from 0 to 5 of 37x cubed + 53X -5". No, there were questions like "A matrix [A] is multiplied by an arbitrary matrix [B] resulting in [A][B] = 7[A]. What is the total of the coefficients in B?" (btw, no, 7 is not an available answer)

I'm sure we've all seen multiple occasions in our lives when it was *vitally* important that we knew the total of the coefficients in an arbitrary matrix [B] resulting in 7[A] when multiplied by [A]. If you can come up with any examples, please feel free to post them in the guestbook. No, rocket scientists are not eligible. Remember, this is HIGH SCHOOL MATH I want to be teaching here.

And let's not talk about the lovely half desk attached to chair I had to privledge to be scrunched into for 3 hours. My left butt cheek was falling off of it for the entire time. Okay, I know I'm fat...but really...

And to top it all off, I won't find out if I passed for FOUR WEEKS!

Makes me want to just go off and hit someone with a stick. Fortunately, I have a hobby where that's an option. Marinus Baronial Investiture is in 5 days :)

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