Archives for The Education of Oronte Churm

Is that 50 cents a minute working the standard 8 hour day, or are you using the 168 hours of the week for your pay scale? Either way, not too shabby, but the latter would be pretty sweet.

Jim, at 11:30 am EDT on June 4, 2007

If you think it’s a pain to grade one of these, try writing the essay in a half-hour without the work in hand. It’s absurdly difficult to write anything insightful about a novel without being able to quote. The whole idea of a timed “literature” exam is one of the stranger innovations of American civilization, IMHO.

D.S., at 4:00 am EDT on June 7, 2007

Creepy, perhaps...but its definitely being pursued.

Anon, at 8:30 am EDT on June 8, 2007

Why creepy? That strikes me as a perfectly appropriate measurement, indeed a necessary one. ETS is asserting that their tests are predictors of future performance — at least that’s how the college admissions people view them, and how college applicants use them. Not to shine a spotlight on your subtext, but the job of the ETS statisticians is to measure the validity of the tests, not to prove their validity.

I suspect the college boards and AP exams are better indicators of a student’s socioeconomic background than a predictor of their future performance. I took a smorgasbord of APs, but none were related to my major, so the scores didn’t quite line up with what became my GPA.

I’m cheered by the middling correlation between the objective section and the written essays. If nothing else, it shows the essays have value and won’t soon be discarded.

dan, at 8:30 pm EDT on June 10, 2007

Poor working conditions at ETS

I read this year in Kentucky for ETS. It was my second year of reading for the U.S. history exam.

Jim Barkus was asked where all the money goes from these nonprofit projects run by ETS and the College Board. In history, each reader read the equivelant of 300 complete exams. It probably cost ETS at the most $4000 to bring us to a reading and pay for all expenses. Do the math at $83 an exam and I, like Jim, wonder where all the money goes.

For readers in all subjects, we are calling for a boycott of the readings in 2008 until ETS improves the pay, food, accomodations, and workplace decision making.

For more information, write us at unitereaders@gmail.com

Joe Hill, Volunteer Organizer for Readers at IWW, at 5:45 am EDT on August 6, 2007

A Student’s Essay (Did You Read It?)

I was intrigued by your blog, how you spoke so sincerely of the AP reading process. As a student, I would like to know if you came across my essay while reading. It was essay #3 requiring me to write about a character’s relationship to his/her past.

Here’s a summary of what I wrote:

I started out the essay with direct imagery quoted from the novel showing how Ethan Frome was physically “smashed up,” that he walked like the “jerks of a chain.” Then I went on to mention that the smash up was the event that changed Ethan, that resulted from his own inability to articulate his feelings (especially his feelings for Mattie), and the social constraints on his marriage to Zeena. I talked about how Wharton used light and dark imagery to illustrate his quandary — light imagery = Mattie who was like a fire “igniting a cold hearth” and Zeena who had a “puckered throat” and “flat breast.” I also gave specific examples of when Ethan didn’t articulate his feelings — like when he was left alone with Mattie when Zeena went to the doctor’s in Bettsbridge, and when Zeena announced that she was letting go of Mattie. As a result, the only courageous act that Ethan made was the “smash up” which ironically was a cowardly act, for his vision was blurred at that point in time... after all, he was an instrument of fate. So, I made the point that the “smash up” is not the only past event that one can consider when looking at Ethan Frome, but one must also consider his inarticulateness and his being a “prisoner for life” in a futile marriage.

I concluded saying that Ethan would never be the engineer that he wanted to be. And this was my last sentence: “Ethan Frome can be seen at the post office, detached, reticent, ‘a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe.’”

Jenae Richardson, at 11:45 am EDT on July 5, 2007

Is that Matt Yeats, goalie for the Texas Wildcatters?

Oronte, at 3:00 pm EDT on June 14, 2007

brilliant!

jmcc, at 8:20 pm EDT on June 16, 2007