To Teach or Not to Teach the Five-Paragraph Essay?

While the field of composition might like to believe it has moved on from concern about the five-paragraph essay, the debate is far from over. The five-paragraph essay continues to be taught, and oppositionists continue to rail against it. As long as the five-paragraph essay continues as a common form of writing assessment on standardized exams and as a form commonly taught in schools, it is a form that will likely persist. Instead of calling for the retirement of the five-paragraph essay, practitioners and researchers need to rethink the potential of the five-paragraph essay as a foundational form and to reconsider approaches to teaching it. Some of the problems associated with the five-paragraph essay are likely due to pedagogical decisions, such as an exclusive focus on the five-paragraph essay and not advancing to other forms when students are ready rather the five-paragraph essay form itself. In this paper, I define the five-paragraph essay, outline some of the historical links to the five-paragraph essay, challenge common criticisms of it, and suggest that such essay might be a useful foundational form.

Educational Assessment Experiences of College Students during COVID-19

To better understand the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on today's college students and tomorrow's workforce, a survey was administered to 992 U.S. college students (Meanage=22.36 years, SDage=5.24; %female=53.3) between February and June 2021 on academic assessment practices they experienced before and after COVID-19. Females reported greater test anxiety and lower computer self-efficacy; neither varied based on race/ethnicity nor parental education. Most reported a transition to an online modality during the COVID-19 outbreak with a decrease in classroom assessments. Though classroom assessment formats appeared to change minimally, assessment administration changed markedly during the pandemic-affected period. Untimed and open-book assessments became more common. Assessments administered in-class and in-person proctored became less frequent. Interestingly, during spring 2021, as many colleges returned to in-person instruction, open-book, outside of class, and exams proctored online or unproctored remained common, suggesting a persistent shift in assessment administration practices. Students generally did not feel that exams covered any less content, however cheating was a concern. Most indicated it was difficult to concentrate and reported the idea of taking an exam was stressful during the pandemic, though many still believed that it is important to have assessments to demonstrate learning. Some noted they no longer planned to take certain standardized exams (e.g., GRE) given changes in admission requirements of post-baccalaureate academic programs. Some felt deterred from pursuing further education, yet others felt more inclined given perceptions of a highly competitive job market. Implications of these findings are discussed.

On Educational Assessment Theory: A High-Level Discussion of Adolphe Quetelet, Platonism, and Ergodicity

Educational assessments, specifically standardized and normalized exams, owe most of their foundations to psychological test theory in psychometrics. While the theoretical assumptions of these practices are widespread and relatively uncontroversial in the testing community, there are at least two that are philosophically and mathematically suspect and have troubling implications in education. Assumption 1 is that repeated assessment measures that are calculated into an arithmetic mean are thought to represent some real stable, quantitative psychological trait or ability plus some error. Assumption 2 is that aggregated, group-level educational data collected from assessments can then be interpreted to make inferences about a given individual person over time without explicit justification. It is argued that the former assumption cannot be taken for granted; it is also argued that, while it is typically attributed to 20th century thought, the assumption in a rigorous form can be traced back at least to the 1830s via an unattractive Platonistic statistical thesis offered by one of the founders of the social sciences—Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874). While contemporary research has moved away from using his work directly, it is demonstrated that cognitive psychology is still facing the preservation of assumption 1, which is becoming increasingly challenged by current paradigms that pitch human cognition as a dynamical, complex system. However, how to deal with assumption 1 and whether it is broadly justified is left as an open question. It is then argued that assumption 2 is only justified by assessments having ergodic properties, which is a criterion rarely met in education; specifically, some forms of normalized standardized exams are intrinsically non-ergodic and should be thought of as invalid assessments for saying much about individual students and their capability. The article closes with a call for the introduction of dynamical mathematics into educational assessment at a conceptual level (e.g., through Bayesian networks), the critical analysis of several key psychological testing assumptions, and the introduction of dynamical language into philosophical discourse. Each of these prima facie distinct areas ought to inform each other more closely in educational studies.

Assessing the Psychological Impacts of COVID-19 in Undergraduate Medical Students

Medical education has been uniquely affected by the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). As the pandemic’s psychological impacts on medical students remain unclear, this study assessed COVID-19’s impacts on undergraduate medical students’ stress and anxiety. A nationwide, online survey was administered via email chains between June-August 2020 to first-fourth year medical students in the United States. Demographics, 4-point Perceived Stress Scale that measures stress, 7-point Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale that measures anxiety, and the impacts of social, health, and academic stressors due to COVID-19 were collected. Of the 852 students who participated, 66.1% experienced mild, moderate, or severe anxiety. Mean PSS-4 score was 7.25/16. Stress was highest in second- through fourth-year students. Students with preexisting mental health conditions had significantly higher stress and anxiety scores, and higher percentage of stress attributed to COVID-19. Trust in government institutions during COVID-19 was the highest stressor in first- and second-year students. Delay/availability of standardized exams was the highest stressor for third-year students. Impact on rotations/residencies was the highest stressor for fourth-year students. Understanding how students’ anxiety and stress have changed due to COVID-19 will allow educators to identify students in need and guide recommendations on the implementation of psychological interventions and support strategies.

Admissions to Medical School During the COVID-19 Era Without the MCAT

As medical schools cope with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new cohort of students will be admitted in the fall. Administrators are again challenged to make unprecedented enrollment decisions without standardized exams. This challenge provides unique opportunities to support holistic admissions but also abruptly bypasses a process that has been employed since 1928. This article highlights key factors that are being considered during current medical school admission cycles, including limited opportunities to take standardized exams, heightened student anxiety, and potential exam alternatives. These factors are framed and discussed within the context of the medical college admission test (MCAT) exam.

Admissions to Medical School during the COVID-19 Era without the MCAT

As medical schools cope with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new cohort of students will be admitted in the fall. Administrators are again challenged to make unprecedented enrollment decisions without standardized exams. This challenge provides unique opportunities to re-evaluate admission processes that has been employed since 1928 and support holistic admissions. This article highlights key factors that are being considered during current medical school admission cycles, including limited opportunities to take standardized exams, heightened student anxiety, and potential exam alternatives. These factors are framed and discussed within the context of the medical college admission test (MCAT) exam.

The Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic on French Language Testing: Delf/Dalf in Indonesia: Case Study

The covid-19 pandemic outbreak has globally affected various aspects of life, including teaching and learning processes. This paper aims to identify the changes in French language examinations conducted in Indonesia during the outbreak and explore the French language testing conditions, such as the worldwide standardized exams in the French language like DELF: Diploma in the French Language and DALF: Advanced Diploma in the French language. This study employs a descriptive qualitative method by collecting the data through observations, interviews with the French Language Institution and the parties involved in teaching and learning processes, and finally, through documentation. The online version of this test is inexistent. Therefore, the results should allow DELF/DALF examination providers to think about an alternative for an online examination. As shown by the findings on the IFI Indonesia website, it can be concluded that: (1) some examinations, including the French language tests, have been cancelled, (2) the number of test-takers has reduced, (3) the people who are in charge of language testing have made efforts to redress this issue to adapt to this situation.

The Effect of Teachers’ Union Contracts on School District Efficiency: Longitudinal Evidence From California

While the effect of teachers’ unions on school districts continues to be debated, the research literature provides few definitive conclusions to guide these discussions. In this article, we examine the relationship between teachers’ union contracts and school district efficiency. We define efficiency as the ratio of short-run productivity (student performance on standardized exams) to expenditures. We estimate a series of school district fixed effect models using measures of district collective bargaining agreement (CBA) restrictiveness tied to longitudinal outcomes. We find that CBA restrictiveness is positively associated with expenditures on students, instruction, instruction support services, and teacher and administrator salaries over time. We find no significant relationship between CBA restrictiveness and student achievement. Finally, we find a negative relationship between CBA restrictiveness and district efficiency. Given the small magnitude of our effect sizes, we conclude that weakening union rights may not produce large gains in efficiency and may come at substantial political costs.

From ‘F’ to ‘A’ on the N.Y. Regents Science Exams: An Overview of the Aristo Project

AI has achieved remarkable mastery over games such as Chess, Go, and Poker, and even Jeopardy!, but the rich variety of standardized exams has remained a landmark challenge. Even as recently as 2016, the best AI system could achieve merely 59.3 percent on an 8th grade science exam. This article reports success on the Grade 8 New York Regents Science Exam, where for the first time a system scores more than 90 percent on the exam’s nondiagram, multiple choice (NDMC) questions. In addition, our Aristo system, building upon the success of recent language models, exceeded 83 percent on the corresponding Grade 12 Science Exam NDMC questions. The results, on unseen test questions, are robust across different test years and different variations of this kind of test. They demonstrate that modern natural language processing methods can result in mastery on this task. While not a full solution to general question-answering (the questions are limited to 8th grade multiple-choice science) it represents a significant milestone for the field.