He's British, shitting on the French is part of his upbringing :D

He sounds like Dexter from Dexter's Lab.

Nearly every issue covered can be traced back to some corporation making a bunch of money. And so we continue the status quo’s no matter how many people or children are screwed over.

i dropped out for these exact reasons. literally Fs in all of my courses because of an ignored iep. the meeting to decide what accommodations i got was humiliating, and the only consolation is that im not alone. shit sucks ASS.

It’s “standardized” testing, they aren’t supposed to make accommodations, they’re supposed to see who meets the standards. You either pass the tests or you don’t.

@@jefffoy530 it affects your standing with college scholarships n shit

This. I encountered this so many times as an autistic individual.

When I was a senior in high school, I was a TA in special Ed. I had to witness 25 high-needs, non-reading teenagers with limited self-help skills be forced to sit in one-piece desks, staggered away from each other (to prevent cheating), a test booklet with their full name and student ID number computer-IBM-printed on the backsides, and be forced to be present for attendance and say “here” without the help of any paraeducator speaking for them. The three kids who Could write their names were expected to fill in bubbles of the letters of their names to help the testing machines recognize “the student can spell their name visually thru filling in the correct bubbles of the spelling of their first, middle, and last names”, and only one student could fill out the bubbles of their first name. The students were then lectured at for 30minutes by a total stranger who didn’t even know them, of the rules and expectations for the test. One by one their stress levels and boredom set in, and even though the “proctor” had instructed the students to “you may now turn the book over and open it, begin the test”. They didn’t know what to do or what was going on. Eventually two students got up out of boredom, obviously didn’t sit down when the “proctor” stranger told them to sit down or they would be punished, and then the one special Ed teacher sitting in a back corner fiddling with a hair scrunchie (bc adult in classroom are supposed to “babysit” and have nothing to do, no reading or writing or doing anything to stay productive, no sleeping but you have to be bored to death) finally escorted the “disobedient” special needs students out of the room, only at which point were they finally excused from “standardized testing due to disability”.

This is such a blast from the past. I'm genuinely curious about the teacher's perspectives, especially as a former IB kid. It felt like every year the teachers would go "Ok, we need to stop teaching you critical thinking because we didn't cover enough..rock types". FCAT science was so poorly thought out. XD

@@strixxslade5675So true. Once had a language arts teacher in 8th grade who kept her old projector because the new smart boards sucked at the time. Lol. Tech issues was one of the biggest complaints. She also cut out a unit to help us catch up on learning punctuation, spelling, and official grammar (usually white official grammar, tho she also taught us punctuation for various dialects when we read stories with them in it) because she was tired of reading papers with so many typos, lol. She was a good teacher.

In my country we never had the type of standardized testing as it is usually portrayed in America. Our tests were always, aahm... For example, math, you had "quick exercises" like calculate this. And we had some "problems" ( as we call them ) to solve. For example, find the height of the pole between you and a certain building. Or the main language test, where we have an initial part of text interpretation questions. Followed by grammar exercises and then a small text of various themes and forms (can be letter form, a resume, a prose, a poem etc). BUT NONE OF THIS as a multiple choice. We rarely if ever have multiple choice exercises in tests. But i kinda fear for the kids if we ever adapt these standardized tests, because i have seen.....not great results in the long term. Mainly where you check the choices you have and the kids focus on trying to "make one fit" instead of resolving it from scratch. If my english is flawed, i apologize.

That's pretty much standard practice, though-pretty much all my AP teachers (back in the early aughts) had done at least one year of grading for College Board, which helped them teach us the difference between a _3_ and a _4._ The fact that they all, without exception, found room to teach us *content of value* that I still remember to this day is a true testament to their dedication as educators and to the quality of my public high school.

You must have missed when John said around 24:40 that they use craigslist to hire graders with teaching experience preferred.

My best friend is a professor at a community college and she's been grading AP exams every summer for like a decade now for the extra money. My favorite story she told me is one year the students on east coast leaked the essay questions for the AP Psychology exam on twitter. So the Collage Board had to rush and write new questions for the west coast. So that year the people grading the Psychology exams had twice as much work to do. They were grading that year not far from where I lived so I met up and picked her up from the location, she said it was hilarious because everyone else was leaving for the day and was like "Later psychology suckers!"

Or Dan Quayle misspelling potato. That was like a week, lol

Now if only the playlist could be in release order, instead of 35->1

I hear you… but I still think they’re bangers. Banger after banger after banger after banger after banger. If I do say so myself.

I love that man. The music breaking right when he shakes his head gets me every time!

True, but I'm stuck on the "barely" working a Doors lyric. That means that it kinda does work.

What if you don’t even have a test on some days? Idk if it was the same for you, but mine was done by class unless it was for big exams like the ACT. Edit: This was for finals mostly done through standardized tests.

Yes PLEASE. I was not that great a student. I found out late I was neurodivergent (ADHD and autistic) and post Hs that I have maths and reading disabilities. This system DOES NOT WORK for disabled students. Be it physical or mental tbh, mostly because of attendance and strictly unfair (to all) and Neurotypical standards of teaching. Universal design needs to be implemented. And this gets worse if a kid has multiple disabilities, and/or is 2E (meaning twice exceptional) a term for students who are disabled and gifted. (And while of course the tests for what is deemed gifted and which forms of intelligence are not perfect, and dependent on the diagnostician and their bias and training, it’s still a pretty important group to pay attention to.) I’m honestly convinced that schooling was never about education, otherwise they wouldn’t keep ignoring new psychological research in what students need as growing humans just for money and to make cog-like workers for college and beyond.

I also have ADD. I was diagnosed late in life (in my 20's) but my younger brother was diagnosed with ADHD in elementary school. I was "missed" because I didn't have the hyperactivity behavior, as where he did. I was labeled "day-dreamy" or not paying attention. I struggled through school because my disorder wasn't discovered early enough. I think I would have done much better in HS if I'd had the tools to help me. I just thought I was stupid, but I am not, I know that now. I have opted for my kids to be exempt from these stupid tests every time they have one.

I just got diagnosed as ADHD last year when I was 39. It was overlooked in females for a long time because it manifests differently in them. I also had amazing coping skills for the longest time. However a couple years ago I started grad school after being out of school for 15 years. And turns out the ways I used to manage and cope with things didn't work anymore. I couldn't figure out why I was barely staying above water. My therapist noticed and suggested I might have ADHD and to talk to my psychiatrist. I was like "Yeah sure whatever." Talked to him about everything and he was like yeah this all adds up. I kept fighting it and he was like "The fact that you're fighting it makes it truer." I'm on 40MG of extended release Adderall now and the noise in my mind is so much quieter.

It’s so weird that stereorype exists. I have tons of ADD/ADHD friends and every single one is a woman.

@@PretendingToBeAHuman It's really just because- of course- ✨sexism ✨ I''m not a doctor, so don't take this as anything concrete, but I'm pretty sure that autism/adhd symptoms can demonstrate differently in cis men/women And guess what the DSM-V is based off of! Yup, cis *men* Of course it is. I'm so sorry for you women who can't get a goddamn diagnosis.

@@wiscogirl81 Good on you! I’m AFAB (and non-binary) but wasn’t diagnosed as ADHD till I was 17 smack in the middle of Junior Year of HS. I’m also autistic, apparently on the gifted scale, and have some learning disabilities, some of which I didn’t know about till I was 20). The trauma of it is so freaking hard tbh, especially if people expect you to just know how to accommodate or get help…without having 10+ years of supports like many of the other kids. For me personally, they refused to give me an IEP, gave me a 504 that was almost never followed, and forced me into meds despite my having complex health issues and wanting to try non medicinal aids first. :/ Shits hard. I’m glad you are looking out for your kids.

It's also odd that you could figure out four of the questions without even reading the story and just by what is said about it in the episode, yet John said that his staff were completely stuck on the questions.

So they didn’t even ASK him to use his writing???

@@ErutaniaRoseI can’t find an NPR interview, but there’s one with Pinkwater and WSJ called “Nonsense on top of Nonsense”. He did get paid for the use of an excerpt for “educational purposes”, but he didn’t know the extent of how they’d change the story. It was originally a fractured fable within a novel titled Borgel-a supposedly-senile old man telling his grandson about a hare racing an eggplant and the eggplant losing, with the moral of “don’t bet on an eggplant”. It was never supposed to make sense (he describes himself as an advocate of nonsense), so when kids call/message him complaining about it, he tells them he thinks the tests are stupid, too

A spherical cow in a frictionless vacuum, on an infinite plane of uniform density.

I don't think John could survive an hour.

Exactly. Plus it doesn’t account for disability AT ALL. Universal design standards would help a ton. They can be useful for non disabled people, and give disabled people what they need at the same time.

Not a fan of standardized tests at all, just adding in as a former teacher: non-standardized assessments/tests in classrooms are created by individual teachers. Nothing exists in a vacuum, so a teacher in FL and a teacher in NJ can each create a test on the same topic but the questions and answers can be pretty different based on their own education, preferences, school administration/departmental focus, inherent biases, local culture, etc. On top of that, grading the assessments isn’t entirely objective, either, especially when considering individual students (eg “Collin was having a bad mental health day that day so his essay doesn’t exactly make sense even though I know he knows it because he got it right in all the classwork, I’ll give him a chance to rewrite for a higher grade”, or “Angelina’s ADHD often means she skips questions unintentionally so I’ll ask her these that she missed”-things that make sense on a human level but aren’t technically “objective”). Theoretically the students in FL and the students in NJ should achieve the same level of reading/writing/comprehension/analysis/research/math/science/etc skills. However, data collection is needed to prove that the quality of education is the same in different states (and even within the same state) and the most consistent way to get accurate data would be to ask every student nationwide the same questions. That’s the problem, though-wanting an objective assessment that can show the metrics of student achievement nationwide and each year of their education makes sense in theory only. What we’ve seen is that when put into practice (ie what teachers have been saying all along) is that there isn’t a standardized test that actually be objective, accurately assess an entire student’s year of learning in xx number of questions, apply all accommodations, eliminate any human error from student or grader, etc…. I understand and appreciate the thought behind all of it, but it was never going to work the way anyone wanted (other than the people making money off it, fuck you Pearson) so the result is inaccurate, manipulated data that is being used to make life-altering decisions for students and teachers. It’s sickening and the tests should just be thrown into the dumpster fire with the rest of the bullshit.

@@starksandrecreation I understand and concur with everything you said. I remember growing up in Iowa in the 70s and 80s having to do the ITBS or Iowa Test of Basic Skills tests every year and no one liked it, but it was mandatory so we weren't even given a choice. I had actually failed 8th grade twice because I quit going to school due to excessive bullying, but that's a different story. Anyway, I had moved to live with my aunt in Indiana and went to school most of the year there and finally passed the 8th grade. When the time had come for the yearly tests, they had the ITBS tests there as well, which was unknown to me before that those were given in states other than just Iowa. I did really well on those tests then and one of the highest in the school and the teachers took notice and told me that I tested at the 10th grade level even though I was in my third year of 8th. Another kind of test I don't agree with is IQ tests because they don't really tell anything about the people taking them. Intelligence of anyone cannot be realistically measured since everyone can have their own level of intelligence. Also, just because someone might be considered intelligent doesn't mean they are smart and no 2 people should be compared with each other when it comes to intelligence. Testing just always feels like a competition and to me that is unfair to children and to society as a whole. I would love to see the US education system revamped and redone to resemble more like what they have like in Finland or Denmark or whichever countries it is where they have a more individualized system. I don't have any first hand experience or anything, just going by what I've seen reported. Students are not all trained with the same regurgitated memorization skills and they aren't tested. They are not expected to go to school until later in the morning after they have had adequate time to rest. They are encouraged to learn about things that they are interested in, which makes sense since not everyone is going to be interested in the same things and that's why some students don't do as well in some subjects as others do. It just seems like a better system over in those countries and it should be something we implement in the US.

Dylan got harrassed/d**th threats, so some people took it very seriously (and then she had to too for her own safety)

It shows the company is run by morons

I'm from Finland and I don't remember taking any during my compulsory school years, I don't believe we have them at all. But of course it's possible things have changed since I left school.

But even that is too much, being neurodivergent myself, the GCSEs were hell and puts people like me at unfair disadvantages because people like myself don't fail standadised exams because we're stupid, as is commonly believed, but rather because the education system is built for and around neurotypical people, including the exams.

@@empress_alex Same for me although I didn't know it at the time as I only find out I had ASD after school & college. But I got all Cs so am happy, if I hadn't in English I would of been really pissed off.

Because they aren't representitive at all lol.

If you doubt this comment please post a photo or question about a particular placement of the country and I will answer it I'm looking at my phone the whole day and will answer immediately

Some people legitimately are better test takers than others. For example, I am an excellent test taker and can easily get high scores on tests even if I haven't studied or straight up don't know the content. Meanwhile, I have a cousin who can study for hours and can fully master a concept and then score very low on a test. She and I have similar levels of intelligence and I watched her work much harder than I did in school, yet our test scores don't reflect that. Not every student is the same and what is easy for one student is not always easy for everyone. Your experiences are valid but they are not universal.

Arrogance is one of the worst qualities in a person.

​​​​It also helps that the students are tested on a piece of writing or equations that they're able to look at again and again. Students should be able to answer questions about something they read. That's what college is about. Usually grades and test scores correspond. That is why they should both be used for college admissions. In theory, teachers are more subjective and the tests are objective @@abbycolby4543

@@bohemianfarm4467 I see this kind of thing all the time where people have to walk on eggshells if they know they did a good job so that the people who didn't don't feel bad. This might be the law of the land on places like Reddit, but I was glad to find people can talk about adult concepts like blame and fault and good job when I got hired at a company. The fact is if you aren't able to do simple HS mathematics, either your teacher messed up hardcore or you simply weren't doing one of the two duties kids have at school: Learn that basic stuff they teach you like addition, subtraction, your times tables, fractions, etc. The other duty I'd argue is to make some friends, but I guess that might also offend you if you happen to have antisocial personality disorder or something. In that case, I'm so sorry you don't adhere to the model used to judge 99% of students on that front like you apparently don't adhere to the model that 99% of students can learn the basics of our universe. THIS IS A CELL. THE POWERHOUSE OF IT IS THE MITOCHORNIA. SUBTRACTION IS LIKE ADDITION IN REVERSE. lmao... calling this arrogance. Man, we are talking about K-12. Lord have mercy. I'm not talking about taking a MENSA IQ test and scoring in the top 0.01% or something. The curriculum is literally designed for everyone to pass if they put some work in. And I had to put some work in too, because my reading memory is trash due to having dyslexia. Guess what I did on tests? I freaking reread the passages, wrote down important points on some paper as I read, etc. And when I studied? I had to learn in 5-15 minute bursts, because I have ADHD. If you were neurotypical, you have absolutely no excuse.

@@abbycolby4543 Thanks for the midnight fairytale story. I'll sleep well with it. No, K-12 tests are literally some of the most simplistic expressions of knowing basic K-12 information. The only exception is if your cousin has literal mental disability in which case I'm sorry he has an actual disadvantage when it comes to K-12. For the rest of the 99% of the population, you learn stuff like "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell," and you get a great score on tests. You could use a form of this argument when tests start venturing into more puzzling questions like in college, but in HS on standardized tests, it is about as easy as any test will get. The topics are easy, and the questions are easy.