meditation on antonym

Here's an interesting comment from Dean about antonym, and why the kids get it wrong:


I'm wondering what conclusions you've drawn from the data you collected. If we knew that the tests were equivalent, then I'd say that what we're doing may not be helping. I'd also suggest we stop teaching tone because the more we do it, the worse the students perform. I hope you know I'm being tongue in cheek (which is actually an odd expression). However, I am concerned that we're making instructional decisions based on data that may not be as accurate as we hope because of the way the tests are constructed. Let me explain.
Our students were making a lot of errors on items associated with synonym and antonym. At first I thought, "OK, this is easy to teach. They obviously don't know the difference." However, they did know the difference with the exception of one student. So I took a closer look at the items testing these concepts. When an item is written, the test makers usually ask the students to give them an antonym for a target word. You'd think this would be straightforward, but when you look at the distractors, they usually include a synonym as a wrong answer. This actually presents a problem because the students look at the target word, figure out its meaning, and then when they look at the answers and see a synonym, then immediately respond, "Aha, there's the answer" while totally forgetting that they're supposed to be looking for an antonym.
To further complicate things, this past test introduced another confounding factor. Sure enough, the question asked for an antonym, this time for the word "compassion." Sure enough, there was a synonym for compassion as one of the distractors -- sympathetic. One of the other distractors was the word "selfish" which is arguably a good antonym for compassion. The "correct" answer was disdainful. Many students didn't know what the word disdainful meant. This is a problem with the item development because if your answer is more difficult than the question, you can't determine what is actually being measured any more. Does this make sense. When I worked at MetaMetrics, my job was to oversee the test construction, in particular training and overseeing the test item writers. In the case of this Benchmark, we can no longer tell if students are being tested on whether or not they can identify what an antonym is or whether or not they know what the word disdainful means.

performance tracker

So yesterday and today I used Performance Tracker to sift through the data from my Introduction to Film class. The results look a lot like they did last year: the students don't know antonym and symbol; they're good on imagery. I'll be choosing the next unit for the film class accordingly (looks like antonym and symbol).

I wonder aloud how long it will take for these problematic concepts to be mastered by the Bulldogs? I'd imagine that, in the next three years, the Performance Tracker data will look very different than it does now.