PROFILING EXAM STRUCTURE AND CONTENTS

PRELIMINARY GOALS...

1. Focus on math exams administered to the youngest children.

   a. Select a few NY State math exams to dissect in terms of term and phrase frequency.

   b. Devise a preliminary approach to report on that exam in terms of metadata and linguistic contents.

   c. Discuss varied methods of comparison with other exams in the same subject as well as across subjects.

2. Dissect exam metadata and raw language contents of a single exam.

3. Report on word frequencies and articulate the questions this raises.

4. Turn exams into integrated structured database model and contents with regard to vocabulary and images.

Each past, present and pending exam needs a way to be uniquely identified. (state:grade:date:location:subject)

In the near future, as a result of Common Core Standards Initiative (http://www.corestandards.org/), we will start to see federally-defined assessment exams for our entire nation to use: a single standard for all.

Thereafter, unique exam identifiers will shift to (grade:date:location:subject:format), where format regards HOW the assessment is done.

5. Consider where there may be revenue-bearing aspects of this work and when protective measure might be prudent.

There will be both open source and proprietary aspects of this project.

6. Present exam report findings informally to language teachers and educators across subjects with the following questions:

   a. Why math language first? b. How can we leverage the value of that vocabulary across subjects?

7. Further discuss the proposed three-tier structure of my project:

   I. "Math as a Second Language"

   Showing where our testing methods are broken, rather than our teachers or our students, is paramount.
   
   The younger the student, the more the flaws are doing damage.  That is why I am starting with the youngest kids.
   

   II. "The Epidemiology of Ignorance"

   Profiling the standardized exams in terms of their flaws and their lack of concord with curriculum is valuable.
   
   Assessing the historical damage that our fine educational system has done and still does is terrifying and depressing.
   
   However, it may also be crucial for helping those in need.
   

   III. "Mapping The Territory and the Adventure Of 21st Century US Public Education"

   Helping principles and faculty to bridge curriculum and assessments ("concord") is a crucial measure to take, but a stopgap one.
   
   The real changes will come with better assessment formats through software that a kid can use to prevent or remediate low test achievement.
   

FOOTNOTE: Anecdotes about Dr. Lewis Thomas, MD, and his career before and after antibiotics are worth considering.

DIRECTORY INDEX:

README.md => This file.

Math_grade3_20100505_metadata.txt => Exam pdf metadata for a 2010 3rd grade NY State Math Exam.

Math_grade3_20100505_scrubbed.txt
=> A scrubbed report on words and their frequency on a 2010 3rd grade NY State Math Exam.

MSL_Process_Flow.txt => Steps for automating this process.