Two Way Street

I've recently been struck by a story of a Florida school board member who couldn't pass a 10th grade qualifying exam.
washingtonpost.com: When an adult to a standardized test
washingtonpost.com: Adult revealed

I'm torn about what to conclude from the story. A fairly successful person, with a lot of education can't pass a this low-level exam given to high school students. Without passing this exam, they get held back in school... it's life changing.

He's pretty adamant that such a test would have ruined his life, and is perhaps doing the same to students today: "It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning... I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable."

This incident is being widely spread as evidence of the failures of outcome based education to fix our scholastic system.

I have been deeply curious about the test, fortunately, the Post placed a few example questions on their webpage. I went through the questions last night. Was the test composed of high level calculus? Discrete math? Probability? Linear algebra? Statistics? You know. The real shit.

Hardly.

The test is algebra and geometry! It's word problems, but it's all solve-for-x kinda stuff.

Word problems always throw people... speaking from years of experience grading chemistry exams.

The test isn't hard. It isn't rigged by corporate goons. The guy who took the test just isn't good at word problems.

This is not written as an advocacy of outcome based education. But there is more going on in this incident than a simple example of "evil" testing ruining lives.

What does it say about what it takes to be a successful person?