• Jc Dicus: I certainly dont believe testing is a valid measure of intelligence but how else do you measure the comprehension and progress of a childs education without some form of testing? How do our educators adjust curriculum without data achieved through testing? Is this about too much testing, wrong kind of testing or testing in general? I am somewhat confused on this issue. • Frank Rommey: When I was growing up, 1940s and 1950s, there was no controversies and tests were no tests but exams... a panel of teachers would query the student to find how much the student learned and how well that learning was used by the student to solve a challenge. Nothing of that junk technology of multiple choice, true-false, or matching tests. No traps laid out to confuse the student. You either knew or you went to remedial classes to learn what you missed. Simple. 80% of our best professionals and scientists were schooled under that old system when they were children. The other 20% were those who didnt need the coaching of a teacher for learning, they would learn on their own, thank you very much, and could have done the same progress without a school. We werent concerned with strengthening self-images either. Then my generation discovered computing machines, and liked the possibilities this nascent technology offered... as a Tool... to be used by educated folks. Never crossed our minds to make it the cure-all for our educational efforts. Nor we ever thought that we would spawn the nasty testing games that followed. Which got nastier as Hollywood invented Trivial Pursuit and it became welded to the testing craze. [Internet is the ultimate Trivial Pursuit for Dummies edition.] Finally we got the profit angle. To make money was almost out of the question when it came to the traditional schools, private or public. The difference was about the students tuition. Public, the tuition was borne by taxpayers supporting as a community, the education of their children. Private, the tuition was borne by the parents, in most cases subsidized by private bequests to those private schools. In either case, there was no profit to be had. Computers and ideological battles changed that, creating an opening for contracted (for profit) business to step in where local administration didnt have the know-how nor the staff to carry on the innovation. If profit could be made this way, how much more profit could be made if they were to take over the whole institution? They apparently thought that it was much more. And the privatization movement was born. The problem was that parents loved the public schools and so far those had done a very decent job. So they needed to create an incentive to abandon supporting the public schools. Testing geared to show that those public schools arent doing their job was their best bet. But, how you get the public to buy testing...? School Reform is born. Circular reasoning that proved good enough to ignite the fire burning our Schools to the ground. The Ivy League Education Reform sprung out of the Master of Business Administration curriculum, not from the science involved in the research about Developmental Neurobiology and Psychology of Human Learning. Thats the real mistake destroying our youth. We have to backtrack and redo the whole enchilada the right way. I hope I gave you a decent rationale for understanding where the problem is found, Jc. There is much more, but basically this is the heart of the issue.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 14:35:03 +0000
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