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Article: Measuring up to the basic-skills test; Staff writer Duchesne Paul Drew tried his hand at practice versions of the Basic Standards Tests in reading and math. Here is his adult's-eye view of the experience.(NEWS)
- Article from:
- Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
- Article date:
- December 5, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Star Tribune Co. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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1/3 For this adult, the tests did the job of measuring basic skills.
Since I read and write for a living, I wasn't especially worried about failing the reading basic skills test. The 40-question, multiple-choice test measures comprehension and ability to sniff out the main idea, to separate fact from opinion and to analyze newspaper stories. I read four stories and got 39 out of 40 questions right on the practice test I took. Ironically, the most difficult question I faced asked me to identify the main idea of a story I had written. (I got it right.)
But I wasn't so confident about the math practice test. I wasn't a straight-A student in ...