I was on the NCES website recently and found myself lured away from the "what's new" research links to the bright colorful bubbly font of the NCES Kids Zone. It's full of educational games and graph-making capabilities that I'm pretty sure no kids are actually using. Are they? Let me know if you know kids or classrooms that are using this site.
Anyway, there's a "dare to compare" tab that lets you try out questions from international tests to see if you really are smarter than 4th graders. You can try out NAEP questions, CivEd questions, or TIMSS- trends in math and science study- questions, the latter of which I find funny since getting kids to try out the TIMSS questions in the Kids Zone is the closest we'll get this time around to actually participating in the next TIMSS. Evidently, participation is expensive (and all the other cool countries aren't doing it either) so we dropped out this time. I find that amusing too- in a depressing sort of way- since we don't have a problem with testing and are otherwise so committed to Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science.
Don't get me wrong- I really enjoyed "daring to compare" in the Kids Zone. But if competing is so important now, as it was then and then, we should spend more time collecting and analyzing comparative data.
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