They spelt his name wrong on the test also it's "Tommy" not "Toni"
Posted on 05/15/2003 4:07:50 PM PDT by ZinGirl
Md. Teacher Finds Botched PSAT Question
Student Test Scores Increased Due To Erroneous Question
POSTED: 9:00 p.m. EDT May 14, 2003
The nation's largest testing company has increased the PSAT scores of nearly 500,000 high school juniors after the company concluded it was wrong about the correct answer to a grammar question posed on the exam last October.
Students were asked if anything was grammatically wrong with the following sentence: "Toni Morrison's genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African-Americans have endured."
The correct choice on the multiple choice exam was originally listed as "no error" by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., which administers the PSAT and SAT for the College Board. The PSAT is aimed at helping juniors prepare for the SAT college entrance exam in their senior year.
Maryland high school journalism teacher Kevin Keegan spotted the botched question in late January.
He informed ETS that the sentence was incorrect because the pronoun in the sentence -- "her" -- was used improperly. Keegan said pronouns should only refer to nouns and in this case Morrison's name is used as an adjective.
The ETS said a committee of experts signed off on the question, which was posed on the exam given Oct. 15 to 1.8 million juniors.
In letters and telephone calls, Keegan persevered.
From experience, he knew that the loss of one or two points on the PSAT could disqualify a junior from becoming a National Merit commended student or a National Merit semifinalist. National Merit academic honors are determined by PSAT scores.
"I have taught dozens of kids over the years who have missed those two cutoffs by one point or one question," he said.
Based on a review by three experts, ETS this month informed Keegan and the students that the sentence would not be counted in the scoring. As a result, the scores of 480,000 students will rise.
Lee Jones, a College Board vice president, said the National Merit Scholarship Program has also agreed to adjust its limits.
"He was persistent in his point and we appreciate that," Jones said of Keegan. "And, he turned out to be correct."
We have homeschooled our kids for eleven years, but they do take the same standardized tests that many public and private school students do - ITBS, PSAT, SAT... They tell me that they get very frustrated with the politically correct agenda of many of the reading selections and questions. My daughter finally realized that she had to get into that mindset if she was going to get the score on the SAT that she needed (1450). When she did, she increased her verbal score by 110 points.
How very postmodern of them. The idea of a single correct answer is of course a result of the phallocentric heteropatriarchal power structure, which denigrates (oops!) ambiguity and insists on a unique dominant grammar.
sad....
Excellent! He'll find it useful for the rest of his life, often in completely unexpected circumstances. I started learning it so I could be an altar boy; then Vatican II did away with the Latin mass. With a start like that, how could I not become a conservative?
They spelt his name wrong on the test also it's "Tommy" not "Toni"
It certainly seems to dangle. There is no context for what "her's" is referring to, according to the rules.
If the PSAT sentence is incorrect, then 'My computer enables me to post to the internet' is incorrect.
I fail to see how your sentence is like the example in the story. Please show me how yours is an example of theirs.
I'm afraid one of the "Rs" these days is "Ritalin"...and another is "Race"
again...no wonder our public schools are failing.
Toni Morrison, a perfectly valid noun, is the context.
Please show me how yours is an example of theirs.
Toni Morrison's | genius |enables | her |to ...
Nouns used as possessive | verb | objective pronoun | subsidiary clause
My | computer | enables | me | to...
Possessive pronoun | verb | objective pronoun | subsidiary clause
If you want an even closer match, replace it with 'RWP's computer enables him to...'
No way! A recent survey showed that 86.1549% of all graduating seniors could put a condom on a banana.
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