Right and Wrong Questions for the Vice Presidential Test

"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of America, where do they go? It's Alaska!" Palin CBS interview, Sep. 2008

Test-Making 101: A Teacher’s Take

Most teachers know that multiple choice tests focusing on facts only are easier for their students to ace than essay tests requiring students to use those facts to analyze a problem and reason their way to a solution. A concrete example would be a map test requiring students to merely identify countries and geographic features of central Europe during World War II, versus an essay test requiring students to argue which side of the warring alliances, the Allied or Axis powers, had the geographic advantage during that war.

Know-nothing students can easily cram to memorize the map of Europe at that time and score an A on the first test. But to score an A on the second test would require an intelligence orders of magnitude higher. Requiring students to demonstrate an understanding of such things as the significance of the easily traversed plains of Poland and the limited coastlines of Germany in the context of the war, the second test would expose which students really deserved an A, and which knew how to cover their shallowness by excelling at rote memorization.

This puts me in mind of Sarah Palin right now, whom I picture desperately cramming with her debate coaches in McCain’s estate in Sedona for the Big Test on Thursday: the Vice Presidential debates.

With even the conservative punditry now conceding Palin is an “embarrassment” who is “not ready” to assume the presidency in the not-unlikely event of the death or disability of the oldest – and either the most politically reckless or medically clueless – presidential candidate in the history of the United States, Thursday’s debate, offering us a glimpse at the most sequestered vice presidential candidate in living memory, looms larger as a serious moment for the fate of the nation because, quite simply, it’s one of the only chances we’ll have to see the candidate think and talk on her feet, live and unscripted.

Palin’s Report Card So Far

Student Palin’s grade point average started with a sterling 100% for her public speaking assessment at the Republican National Convention. She turned in a gifted performance there, reading someone else’s speech off a teleprompter. A+.

But since then, in her three subsequent assessments – a number about which classmate Joe Biden, who has had almost daily assessments in the media and on the campaign trail, should complain to the principal, since the teacher is clearly showing favoritism to Palin by excusing her from all these tests – Palin’s g.p.a. has crashed and burned. She scored a C in her softball interview with Charles Gibson, a C in her love-fest with FOX’s Sean Hannity, and an F (a “Z-” grade being unavailable) in her debacle with Katie Couric.

What We Learn from Student Councils

Watching the former beauty queen and high school track star eat crow on the national stage is an experience not unfamiliar to that of many high school teachers who watch that painful annual ritual in high schools around the world called the Student Council elections. They always involve the popular kid – the cheerleader or football star with ill-starred academic records – deciding, due to ill-advised assurances that popularity is all that matters to win an election, to enter the race. Then on speech day, the cafeteria kings and queens face off against the Math Club and Literary Magazine whizzes, and the former show their stuff while the latter show their lack of stuff.

It often ends in tears on stage, pity in the crowd, and teachers afterwards trying to help the unfit student draw some wisdom from the experience about the difference between confidence and ability, and between sound advice and bad.

The McCain campaign gave Palin bad advice here. No mayor of a town smaller than many big-city high schools (only 6,000 residents) not yet through her second year as governor of a state whose population is smaller than all but North Dakota and Vermont should be expected to ace a test designed to assess the next president of the nation with the world’s largest economy and military. And that the McCain campaign didn’t foresee this blinding reality when they urged her to join the ticket speaks volumes about either its staggeringly bad judgment or, to go Rorschach on you, its withering cynicism regarding the intelligence of the American electorate.

And as a result, the good cheerleader is undergoing a public humiliation that pulls at the heart-strings of any caring teacher. “Whoever put her up to this,” the teacher thinks, “should be ashamed.”

The Most Important Test in American History? A Plea to Gwen Ifill

But Palin rose to the bait, and the debate is set. She’s cramming in Sedona for a test any good teacher who knows this student knows she cannot ace – if the test is a form of assessment for thinking instead of memorizing.

And that’s what makes me think the most important person in this debate in not Palin, and not Biden. It’s the assessor – the person who creates the test questions.

So to PBS moderator Gwen Ifill, I can only offer this advice: give an assessment that will show the electorate not who can memorize the most facts. That kind of test leads to a class with all A’s. Instead, give a test that will show us how these candidates will use their knowledge-base to solve problems.

A very perceptive commenter on the Chicago Tribune’s blog says as much in the below:

The key to the debate will be for either the moderator or Biden to dig beneath the thin veneer of rote memorization that will be the basis of her performance. She has had plenty of time to memorize some statistics and talking points to certain questions she knows will be on the test, and even someone with her intellectual paucity can do that somewhat convincingly.

It’s when you dig slightly beneath the surface that she implodes. As anyone who has ever B.S.ed their way through anything knows, your goose is cooked when you’re asked to explain the basis of your statements. Being able to give simple, concise answers to complicated questions is way harder than it looks. You need to have a deep understanding of what you’re talking about – an understanding of international and domestic affairs that are the result of years and years of study and analysis, not just a few weeks of cramming.

If Ifill’s debate questions follow those guidelines, the nation benefits. If not, it may fall victim to the most fateful and disastrous consequences of grade inflation due to lack of assessment rigor in the history of the United States.

Palin is clearly likable, her policies and beliefs notwithstanding. But by putting herself in line for the Oval Office, we can’t let our sympathy for her soften our assessment of her. She’s not running for student council or small-town mayor. She’s running for 76-year-old-heartbeat-away-from-president. It shouldn’t be an easy test to pass.

–

Image: BoingBoing

1. Palin Debate Flowchart: Smiling Down the Decline
2. After Tom Friedman, Sarah Palin is Flat Now Too
3. Blogging to Learn and Questions of Standards: A Dialogue
4. Very Presidential McCain “Aware of the Internet”

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.