Training The Business Process Consultants of the Future!

Because of some odd quirk in my school's tradition, I couldn't get on the speech team until I was a junior in high school. So I spent a year on the debate team.

Jay Kisch and I kicked tush at "novice" level; I knew a thing or two about talking to people, and Jay, of course, could talk an ethically-strict pharmacist out of his birth control pills. And we were both good at building a case, which helped.

Then, for one tourney in Fargo, they moved us up to Varsity. Neither of us had ever seen a varsity debate, but I figured since we were like 9-0 at Novice, we were probably ready.

In our first match, we ran up against two guys from Shanley High, in Fargo (the state's big catholic high school). One guy looked like Screech from Saved By The Bell. The other guy looked even Screechier. I presented our case.

Then Screechier took the podium. When he was told to start, he jumped into action like a verbal greyhound out of the rhetorical gate, talking very fast, but in an adenoidal, droning monotone. Where the content of most debates washed over you like waves on the beach, Screechier was a water cannon. He prattled happily along as Jay and I scrambled to find data and also stay awake. Their strategy seemed to be to toss so much data into play that we couldn't respond to it all, ceding points by default. It worked.

At the end of the debate, the judge gave them stellar points for their case - enh, whatever - but also...perfect speaker points! Jay and I were stunned; if you went to Hyde Park or a bowling alley or on the air or anywhere talking like Screech and Screechier, you'd be more likely to get a dangling wedgie in the rest room than to "win" the debate! And yet, that's what the system rewarded.

So I'm reading the criticism of the new SAT test's essay section with keen interest.

The SAT's new writing test -- an essay that students must complete in 25 minutes -- was supposed to add new rigor to the multiple-choice college admissions process. But now there is growing criticism that students are not rewarded for how well they write, but how long they write. According to a New York Times story, an MIT professor has found that the more words a student wrote on the test, the higher their score. And factual errors don't lower a student's score.

In addition, a recent report by the National Council of Teachers of English wonders whether the test, and another administered by the ACT, has the potential to "compromise student writers and undermine longstanding efforts to improve writing instruction in the nation's schools."

I thought this part was funny, in a grim kind of way (emphasis added):

But Mark Davison, director of the University of Minnesota's Office of Educational Accountability said that testing writing is a good idea.

"It's one of the skills that kids use most often when they get to college," he said.

And testing what amounts to a first draft is valid, he said. After all, most professors judge writing by the product, not the process.

And rewarding length makes some sense, Davison said. The best essays tend to be longer because students include more facts and elaboration to back up their main point.

"These tests have limitations. People should be aware of that," Davison said. "But you can't write a real good essay that's real short."

Funny, isn't it? The bureaucrat endorses a test that seems tailor-made to reinforce writing like bureaucrats...

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Mitch at May 6, 2005 06:02 AM | TrackBack