The Praxis II Can Suck My Dick!

Yesterday I had the exciting privilege of taking the 80 dollar Praxis II test required to gain teacher certification in my content area, English.
Needless to say, this obnoxious shit-eating test left me with a bad taste in my mouth. (which I fixed with a bad ass bacon egg and cheese sammich and mound of hash browns from Letterman's Diner... fuckin A!)

This bad taste wasn't due to my fear of failing, maybe I did... I don't know... sometimes I felt like I was on top of the world, others not so much... mostly due to the fact that when I felt I got one wrong, it ended up being a few questions in a row... ugh.

Honestly though, bullshit standardized tests, I usually do pretty well on. Praxis I i got through with flying colors, I even managed to pass the writing section, which I wrote quite informally in. Mainly due to being prompted with such an enraging essay question, "Do you think Americans are materialistic," oh boy, the person who rated that must have had a blast.
I even scored higher on my SAT than my guidance counselor predicted... and he blatantly called me out on it; "Your score doesn't make any sense to me..." That's nice, glad he could have some confidence. Not that I scored particularly well... but after three years of PSAT's predicting I wouldn't get over a 1000, beating that curve by about 200 impressed him.
And then, even all through grade school with all those CAT tests and whatnot, I always managed to get into the above average percentiles.

So hating this test isn't even a matter of me feeling like I failed it, or that I can't take these kinds of tests... because I certainly can. These kinds of tests always tier me into the slightly above average, capable category... which I can agree is a fair assessment of my skill. However, my test taking skills were slightly shaken yesterday when I had 80 dollars and teacher certification on the line... obviously, taking CATs and PSATs... I could have given two shits less.

Anyway, let me get away from bragging about my slightly above average-ness skills concerning test-taking and tell you why I think this test is bullshit.

Firstly, about 60% of this test was solely reading comprehension.
You know, the same fucking questions you've seen on EVERY standardized test... huge chunk of paragraph, followed by 2-4 questions about it.
This is my content area test, why are there so many of these.
A.) These were on my Praxis I
B.) I'm a fucking English major, this is my concentration... can you just assume I have some reading skills... maybe?
But no, you "test" my reading skills by forcing me to answer all of these questions in a completely unrealistic to life situations "test."
When am I going to have to read 40 fragments of stories and essays, and answer 2-4 questions about each within a 2 hour period?
This isn't applicable to my concentration... sure I have to have reading comprehension skills, but I feel like I'm being tested on my test taking ability more than anything.
Which shouldn't be the focus of this test.
It's teacher certification!

Then, I have to deal with the bullshit answers.
Well, they at least upped the the difficulty of the answers, or maybe it just seemed that way because I was a little flustrated.
For example, one excerpt asked the question, "How would you describe the feelings of the character in this piece?"
I got the answers down to A.) Anxious B.) Apprehensive...
Then, wait a second, aren't these words fucking synonyms?
They're unreasonably close... and when you're in a frustrating, not applicable to real life testing situation... you are in no position to differentiate which one is "more right. "

Much fewer of my questions had to do with teaching situations... maybe 10-15 TOPS of the 120 actually applied any teaching knowledge. "What would be the best way to teach this... apply that... etc."
One question asked.
"Your school has supplied you with a text that has a lot of large and difficult words that your students may not be familiar with, what would be the best way to work with this book?"
One of the fucking choices was "get a different book."
That better have been my guaranteed throw away answer! If that's the answer someone should be fired, immediately.

Another type of question that annoyed me was the simple, "here's an excerpt from a book.. choose the name of book and author."
I'd consider myself pretty well read, especially when it comes to things high schoolers are expected to read... but two of these such questions, I was clueless... knew none of the books or authors... ugh.
Of course, both of those questions were associated with all female authors, so maybe that's just saying something about me...

As time came to a close for the test I started to think positively however...
"At least I can do well on the written part," I thought.
Oh wait... there is no written part.
The Fucking Certification test to teach English doesn't even have any fucking written essays!
No application! I'm not required to have a portion of the test which rates whether I have any kind of writing skills, any critical analysis skills, no use of any kind of literary theory, not even basic application of the 5 paragraph essay!
What a fucking joke...

So needless to say, I think a standardized test that decides whether or not I'm "certified" to teach my concentration area is absolute rubbish!
Ironic that, in all my of Education classes we stress how much the education system needs to break away from standardized testing, how acknowledging Bloom's Taxonomy (More than just Knowledge and Comprehension skills are important but Analytical, Synthesis, Application, And Evaluative skills as well) the 9 Intelligences (more than just Logic and Reading skills, but Spatial, Intra-Inter Personal Skills, so on).
How all of these concepts are important, and then the deciding test is a nonsense, useless standardized test which appeals to nothing but basic Knowledge and Comprehension Skills, and The Logic/Reading skill, test taking intelligences.

I went into that test expecting to apply so much more.
To be asked to identify poetic forms, literary conventions, general writing and grammar skills and all of these were much less acknowledged than "reading comprehension."

I call bullshit on Praxis II...
It can suck my dick...
and if I have to take that shit again... oh boy will I be mad.