NDA Journal 2 Dr. Orr practices Anesthesiology and OMS in Las Vegas, is an Adjunct Professor (Surgery) at UNLV SM and Touro University SM (Jurisprudence), Professor Emeritus at UNLV SDM, and a member of the CA Bar and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Editor’s Message Daniel L. Orr II, DDS, MS (anesth), PhD, JD, MD EditorNDA@nvda.org NDAJ Exclusive The Tyranny of Testing The dentist readership of the NDAJ have all been through a highly competitive and quantitatively and qualitatively rigorous academic course on the road to a dental degree. Congratulations on making the grade; not everyone did. It is safe to say that many pre- professionals have wondered if they would make the cut. For the last 100 years or so,1 achieving academic goals has been determined by success with multiple-choice testing, wherein the alleged “best” answer must be picked, but without allowing the tested the option of explaining the reasoning behind the chosen answer. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) became the standard in 1926. What serious university, or even high school, student, has not accurately determined that a multiple-choice question was ridiculous? Who hasn’t wondered if the test developer wasn’t even as qualified to pose the question as the student? With regards to nonsensical questions, were they intentionally or unintentionally bad? Lives are actually seriously affected by such testing issues, so they matter, a lot. Evaluating multiple-choice tests occasionally includes listening to the tested, for instance when one or more are challenging the “right answer” with incisive reasoning. We’ve been in classes where it is announced that a question or two has been “thrown out” for some defect, which is fine unless you already happened to stumble upon the “right answer.” Intentionally making the test question more difficult than the actual subject being evaluated is a real phenomenon. Two examples come to mind: Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) and the California State Bar examination. The population taking these tests are either trauma surgeons or attorneys, so theoretically an erudite crowd that probably knows most of the answers in a practical sense. In order to somewhat artificially obtain a more typical bell curve, or perhaps to limit Figure 1, Chalk Dust
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