Vyacheslav Zagorsky. I like this Unified State Exam

On January 29 in my school , I posted a printout of an online message about the decision of the Council of Rectors of Moscow Universities regarding entrance exams this year. And he immediately began to convince graduates of at least the chemistry class to definitely go and take this most “terrible and terrible” Unified State Exam. Finally, it can be taken in Moscow. And you can even use it to enter some universities.

You don’t have to take the exam, or you can do it without it. The November decision of the Moscow Department of Education , confirmed by the rectors, turns what could have been a forced testing nightmare into a real experiment in improving the graduate certification system. Unfortunately, this applies only to graduates of Moscow schools.

Thus, in Moscow we have actually returned to the “Teletesting” experiment, which began back in 1997. At that time, the system of centralized remote testing was intensively developed and could gradually gain universal recognition as an addition to traditional entrance exams. Interestingly, its creators did not claim a monopoly. Here is what the scientific director of the Teletesting project, Alexander Shmelev, wrote to me (e-mail) about this in March 2000:

We DO NOT CONSIDER tests as the only and sufficient method of testing knowledge. They should be complemented by traditional written long-response examinations. But the shortcomings of the test method do not mean that it should be neglected altogether (as is done at Moscow State University in most academic departments). It would be wise to add test scores to traditional exam scores. Such an approach would not completely close the way for those who cannot quickly solve tests (except for those who are not sure how much 2X2 will be). But, unfortunately, the usual “either-or” logic dominates in many issues (it dominates both among opponents and supporters of the test method).

The Unified State Exam differs from the “teletest” tasks, but its parts “B” and “C” can hardly be called a “traditional written exam”.

Now the organizers and supporters of the Unified State Exam have a unique chance to prove the advantages of the new system in a democratic way, giving schoolchildren and university admissions committees - at least in Moscow - freedom of choice. Therefore, it is even a pity that the rector of Moscow State University V.A. Sadovnichy refused to count the results of the Unified State Exam upon admission to Moscow University - it would have been possible to compare students admitted through the two systems at the first session. It is interesting that at the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University (Viktor Antonovich is a professor of Mechanics and Mathematics), testing is used at the first stage of the spring faculty Olympiad - as a stage of preliminary selection of participants - and in this form is accepted by them without objection.

Apparently, those Moscow universities where applicants will be admitted this year using traditional exams and the results of the Unified State Examination need to conduct a thorough comparison of their students who entered through different routes. For example, in the framework of traditional entrance exams, based on my own surveys of freshmen (by the way, precisely in the form of tests, although anonymous for the respondents), I easily distinguish those who were trained by tutors from those who studied chemistry mainly on their own 1 . Such studies will allow representatives of higher education to move away from emotional assessments and make a reasoned decision on the advisability of using the Unified State Exam as entrance exams.

The organizers of the Unified State Exam began to take into account critical comments on the content. Perhaps the long preparation of the official collection of tasks by the publishing house "Prosveshcheniye" is associated with editing the texts of the tasks before publication. Last year's collection with tasks from 2002 (chemistry) caused a lot of comments , so even the already published tasks from 2002 in the new collection 2 were edited anew. For example, in the same set of the Unified State Examination in Chemistry (2002), in comparison with the previous collection, 11 problems out of 60 were edited, and 9 problems were completely replaced. Of course, such careful preparation of problems is desirable before the examinees receive them, and not a year and a half after the exam, but a positive trend can still be noticed. It is especially gratifying that in the published five versions of the 2003 assignments there are almost no errors in content.

It remains unclear why a huge array of Unified State Exam problems is still kept secret. Indeed, in those schools where traditional final exams are still taken, specific topics and variants of problems from previously published sets are simply announced before essays and mathematics.

Entrance tasks for the Faculty of Chemistry of Moscow State University are regularly repeated, all of them are published, including in the form of an analysis of the most difficult and frequently encountered ones - and this does not lead to inflated results for new generations of applicants.

Much in the current reforms of our education is surprisingly reminiscent of what happened in the Soviet school in the 20-30s of the 20th century. For example, today's “innovative” introduction of an integrated course “natural science” (analogous to the imported “science”) is similar in detail to the “method of life complexes” on an interdisciplinary basis of the 1925/26 academic year 3 . Then it was quickly canceled (in 1931), because it became clear that with the dropouts that resulted, industrialization of the country was impossible. And sets of standardized tests to measure skills in reading, arithmetic and writing were introduced in Soviet schools also in 1925. The insufficient reliability of the tests of that time (by the way, like the current ones, they were very similar to the American ones) led in the “totalitarian” Soviet state to the fact that all tests were generally banned. The matter ended with the infamous resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of 07/04/1936 “On pedological perversions in the system of People’s Commissars of Education” 4 .

In recent years, we have seen the opposite trend - the forced introduction of what was classified as “perversion” almost 70 years ago. Textbook stores are already filled with collections of tests and test preparation guides. In fact, there is a return to the unsuccessful attempt at mass introduction of programmed learning in the 60s and 70s of the last century. And it is unlikely that the results of such “innovations” will differ from those achieved previously. Therefore, it is quite possible that as a result of maintaining the not-best tradition of tough monopolistic decisions in the field of education, we will get a new sharp turn in the opposite direction - as is already happening with history textbooks.

The Moscow version of the 2004 final and entrance exams gives the experiment with the Unified State Exam a new chance - the possibility of open comparison and analysis of results by secondary and higher schools. The Ministry of Education should not miss it.

Notes:

1 Zagorsky V.V. A paradoxical result of the study: quantity does not always guarantee quality. Chemistry at school, 2002, #7, pp. 16-19.

2 Unified State Exam: Chemistry: Control. will measure. materials. A.A.Kaverina, D.Yu.Dobrotin, Yu.N.Medvedev and others - M.: Education, 2003. - 256 p.

3 Parmenov K.Ya. Chemistry as an academic subject in pre-revolutionary and Soviet schools - M. Publishing House of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, 1963. - 359 pp., p. 239.

4 Russian Pedagogical Encyclopedia: in 2 vols. - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1998.