Why do eighth graders spend more days in standardized testing than med student/residents spend on all three Steps?

Because med students have already passed all those other tests beforehand. Try to keep up.

Because when we're pre-meds we learn how to count units. Days != hours.Your "5 days of testing" in 8th grade is probably a max of 4 hours per day. Total: ~20 hours.USMLE Step 1: 8 hoursUSMLE Step 2 CK: 8 hoursUSMLE Step 2 CS: 6 hoursUSMLE Step 3: 7 hours first day, 9 hours second dayTotal: 38 hours.Additionally, the volume of info covered is much greater per unit time, as you have long vignettes and about ~1 minute per each question.

wasted time wrote:

My niece recently finished eighth grade she told me that she had a full week of standardized testing near the end of the school year. All three of the USMLE steps together take a total of four days to complete. How can it possibly take more days to test what a kid learned in one year of middle school than it takes to test the entirety of knowledge necessary to gain a medical license?

Hell, the MCAT takes one day, and tests (in its new version) 41 credits of college coursework.

Ortho Matcher wrote:

Because when we're pre-meds we learn how to count units. Days != hours.

Your "5 days of testing" in 8th grade is probably a max of 4 hours per day.

Total: ~20 hours.

That's exactly my point. How is it efficient to spend 5 days doing what is probably actually more like 10-15 hours of actual testing, when other entities have figures out how to test greater volumes of material in fewer days?

dfasfasfasd wrote:

Because med students have already passed all those other tests beforehand. Try to keep up.

What does this have to do with anything? My point is that it's obviously possible to design a more efficient test. Your comment has nothing to do with that.

No, your point is "LOOK AT ME! I TOOK THE MCAT!"

In my district it's two hours a day for 4 days. A total of 8 hours.

The answer is that it's much more profitable for companies to make long and frequent tests. The kids aren't spending just that week on testing. They typically have a bunch of weeks devoted to testing. And they don't even really get to see their answers or go over them with the teachers afterward. Nor do the teachers get to go over them. So, no one gets any specific benefit to the tests. The tests themselves correlate little if anything with the classes--the teachers can't even see sample tests usually to direct education. The questions are often trick questions and sometimes involve multiple steps in each question, so that when the states set their arbitrary, political-economic pass/fail/proficiency standards, they will often fail a kid who was getting three or four steps correct on each of multiple questions but not getting any credit at all, because you had to get five or six steps correct to get a single question right.

Everyone needs to watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lyURyVz7k

John Oliver on Standardized Testing. Explains the whole thing.

I'd argue that the USMLE Step 1/2 is important, but the USMLE Step 2 CS is pretty pointless due to the 99%+ passing rate.

Because government officials think they know more about education than teachers

Because testing companies make big money off of each standardized test that is administered/graded.

wasted time wrote:

That's exactly my point. How is it efficient to spend 5 days doing what is probably actually more like 10-15 hours of actual testing, when other entities have figures out how to test greater volumes of material in fewer days?

Hint #1: Eighth graders don't stand up to hours and hours of testing per day several days in a row quite like medical students do.

Hint #2: Eighth graders' time is not quite so limited. Using up a half day in which they were going to watch Pocahontas and discuss it carries relatively little opportunity cost.