I would like to see a system put into place where you need to pass exams to move on from junior high to high school and high school to college. And if you do not pass the exams, you would have an opportunity to go to a school that is focused on vocational training.
If you did not pass the high school exam, and you still want to go to college, you should be given the opportunity in a community college. However, courses at a community college should be there for a student to prepare for the university experience, rather than receive college credit.
The idea could:
(1) Open up other other opportunities that are just as important (vocational training)
(2) Raise the expectations for what our students should be doing (making them more competitive internationally)
What do you suggest we do in order to improve the quality of our students compared to international competition?
See the 8th Grade Final Exam below:
This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in
the
Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts
of “lie,”"play,” and “run.”
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein
that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How
many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at
50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the
necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and
have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long
at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the
distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt
1. Give the epochs into which
2. Give an account of the discovery of
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the
5. Tell what you can of the history of
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell ,
Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620,
1800, 1849, 1865.
Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic,
orthography, etymology, syllabication
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph,
subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u.’
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two
exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a
word: bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following,
and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir,
odd, cell, rise, blood, fa re, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight,
fane, fain, feign, vane , vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate
pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.
Geography (Time, one hour)
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Des cribe the mountains of
5. Name and describe the following:
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the
7. Name all the republics of
8. Why is the
9. Describe the process by which t he water of the ocean returns
to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of
the earth.
I think this is b/s. 8th graders should not have to take a test to continue on to high school. If you don’, pass certain classes you get held back. Also no one would pass this test. I have never failed a class and I don’t even think I would be able to pass.
well, i don’t think i would be able to pass that. most of it is pretty pointless and stupid. like etymology, isn’t that, like, a study of fish or something? why would an eight grader know about that? i guess if you were taught for the final exam throughout the duration of your eight grade year (or even your school years) then maybe you would be able to pass it. but other than that, it just seems like useless facts. i don’t even know what fain, fane, fein is…
i don’t know what they felt kids needed to know in 1895, but now, i don’t think any eight grader could get 100, or anything, on this.
i wonder if many kids went on to highschool.
This will create an even bigger economic divide between the classes. Not to mention the costs involved in making another test. It’s a great idea for international competition… but it’ll never work. The US is not education based compared to other countries in Asia, specifically China. We can’t compete.
The first years of this test would result in a massive overflow of students attending community college and vocational schools simply because they couldnt pass the test. Do you honestly think the teens of this country could handle something like this? I don’t. It’s too late for that.
Well, concerning international competition, I think America will always be behind. It’s our lifestyle. In some Asian cultures, education comes before everything. You come home, you do your homework, you do your chores. In America, it’s basically whatever you want to do when you get home. It’s really how we chose it to be. Also, there really aren’t that many incentives to be the best in the class. For instance, in Japan, grades are publicly posted. Everyone knows what you’re getting. Everyone [i]tries[/i] to be the best. Here, it really doesn’t matter. But I do believe parental involvement plays a large portion. If the parents aren’t supporting at home, what reason is there for the student to try to achieve?
At every school, the kids are taught different things at different times. We learn about how to get a bill passed while other schools learn where Kazakztan is. You can not compare different schools, in different time periods, on levels of education because there are many things that factor into play.
The tone of this article is that kids these days are dumber than kids in 1895. I want to see a colonial student try and email their professor about help on an online blog assignment. They would fail misserably.
It is no surprise that many of todays seniors in high shcool failed this test because we havnt been taught this material since 8th grade or before. The test seems very similar to final exams now, which on a scale of toughness, knock the 8th Grade exam out.
At conventional schools, students must study for weeks in advacnce to take a 2 hour test that goes over the topics covering an entire year of learning. This 8th Grade test was obviously studied for in advance and in class, they practiced for it in the weeks coming up to it so any student who studied, should have been able to pass. The seniors who took it were probably asked to participate in a survey where they had no prior information to study.
Today’s students are in a much different boat when it comes to their education. We are learning and studying to go differnt places in life than the students from 1895. We have much more knowledge in many different areas then they did and can funcition in a greater world than they ever even knew about, except on maps.
Regarding the level of current students knowledge, there are many thigns that have to be factored in. There is a tone that todays students are lazier, do not understand the value of working hard, and are overall not as intelegant. This can not be blamed entirely on the student though. We are growing up to live in a tech-savy world, where knowing how to program a computer is more helpful then telling someone what diphthongs and cognate letters are.
The fact that seniors failed this test shows nothing of our current knowledge and understanding and can not be used to discredit todfays students from all the acheivements we gain.
I really think it is stupid to give 8th graders a test to go onto high school. Isn’t required by law, that everyone under 18 should be in school? What if they cannot pass this test? But do have enough knowledge to pass classes in high school. Some kids just blank out on tests because they get nervous, but actually can pass their regular classes. And for not passing the high school exam, and being told what college classes they can take, is kind of dumb too. What if a student does not want the options there for them, but want the ones that would have been there if they passed? Yeah, I know being in high school they should pass it since they’re going to be adults soon. But like I said sometimes kids freak out/blank out on tests. Forget formulas (but know how to do it once they see it). Are not taught certain things in their classes. Etc. There’s all kinds of factors that can be why they don’t pass, but doesn’t mean they are not capable of succeeding in life and in college. And creating more tests and such will ask for more money. And there’s already a big need for money in education, we’re just gonna put ourselves in debt in either the education department, or in other departments that we take money for or cut in order to get the money for these tests and everything. I honestly makes me mad that they’d have a test for 8th graders to take and need to pass to make it on to highschool. They have the right to go to high school.
i think that it is a goood idea actually. some kids enter high school not even knowing how to do basic algebra and yet pass their class? test scores and grades aren’t matching up and i think a test is a little more credible. i must say that some of these questions are quite ridiculous but i dont mind the idea of having a test to exit out of middle school. it cold help kids to see if theyre ready and what they neeed to focus on. getting a D in an 8th grade math class is passsing, yes but something still neeeds to be done before they can get into high school arithmatic
I feel that in order to beat the competition, we have to feel it’s a competition and here in the United States, students don’t feel they are learning so that they can fare well in the world market, but because it is just something expected of them. A great example would be I-Poly where no competition is seen and I don’t just mean athletically.
At our school there is no valedictorian, class rank, Renaissances assemblies or any other way to acknowledge and reward those that do well. The incentives to excel in class aren’t really there. Yes, there are long-term rewards like getting into a top notch college, but the short-term rewards are non-existent. At my middle school there were many factors that led students to succeed, (and almost all do) but I think that one of the major components were our Renaissance assemblies.
Besides trying to out cheer the other grades, the purpose of our Renaissance assemblies was to acknowledge those that did well in the month. In between games and acts, teachers would award two core value students of the month (we had 8 core values), a student of the month, most improved student and honor role. You were called out in front of the entire school and given a t-shirt, certificate and gift card of some sort amidst great applause. We could always see the pride in the students’ faces that won, especially the most improved, and it made all those in the audience want to try harder, even if it was just for the free Pazookie coupon.
By doing this, as well as announcing STAR testing scores, I really feel it helped many students (like me) more than hurt them. Yes, in competition there are always losers, but if having “losers” is what we’re afraid of, I must assure you that these assemblies were in no way cutthroat. They seemly showed that the school was proud and wanted to reward you for doing well or showing great improvement. Now I know that this may not solve the issue everywhere because they are several factors that go into creating successful students, but I know this could definitely help I-Poly. By adding the little competition award assemblies bring, the school can then move onto challenging students more because, even though harder, they’d be more willing to succeed so that they can get that reward the next time the Renaissance assembly comes along.
I don’t know if this test will be such a great idea. I don’t think it will work because in the first years the majority of students would probably be in vocational training or in community college. I don’t think today’s teenagers could pass this test. I know I couldn’t. Some of the questions seem pointless, why would an 8th grader need to know all these random facts in order to be able to go to high school? And it wont help with our international competition either, American education will probably always be behind other countries. And what would happen once the student goes through vocational training and still doesn’t pass this test? Does that mean that this student wont be able to go on to high school and then to college? Just because of a test? It seems like a pointless idea to me, based on the students of this era. Maybe in 1895 students could pass this test because that’s all they taught them in school, but for us I don’t think most students would be able to pass.
Wow this test is surprisingly very hard i dont know many things on this. i think that society is becoming dumber because we rely to much on technology such as caculators and computers to do our work.
Having this new exam to evaluate kids’ intelligence on what they learned is a good thing to do. The amount of college students that drop out will decrease dramatically, and test scores would incease also. This would boost our nations in a variety of ways by increasing the amount of jobs that require education. The youth would be much more educated and also be more likely to make smater choices in life. Many of the oppurtunities only some high school students have, others will also have. Eventually our economy would rise with these well educated students and our nation would once again be competitive when it comes to education.
I think this is idotic because your going to waste so much money on tests and we already have enough tests since we take the Exit exam thats all you need because that test is pretty much passing 8th grade so why would you have to take two tests? about the same grade? its dumb. I don’t think this would help out the students i think they would end up failing because they won’t think its important to pass an 8th grade test maybe passing a test to go to college, of course!
so i just think this would be a waste of money and wouldnt benefit anything.