http://kayda.edublogs.org/2007/10/23/which-is-more-important-tests-or-teaching/ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:43:42 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 hourly 1 http://kayda.edublogs.org/2007/10/23/which-is-more-important-tests-or-teaching/comment-page-1/#comment-13 » Comments Language is power, to teach language is to empower. Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:53:21 +0000 http://kayda.edublogs.org/2007/10/23/which-is-more-important-tests-or-teaching/#comment-13 [...] acht/ocho/huit [...] [...] acht/ocho/huit [...]

]]> http://kayda.edublogs.org/2007/10/23/which-is-more-important-tests-or-teaching/comment-page-1/#comment-11 Chris Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:15:23 +0000 http://kayda.edublogs.org/2007/10/23/which-is-more-important-tests-or-teaching/#comment-11 Wow. This Julian character seems to put a lot of emphasis on standardized tests. I disagree with him completely, as you seem to have. What are we going to find out if we have a perfect national standardized test to assess how students are doing? Oh, it turns out their not doing well, lets concentrate on improving our education program. GREAT. We could just concentrate all this standardized testing effort on teaching kids and we won't have need for a test to tell us to teach them better because we're already doing it! The only useful thing I can see that we gain from all this testing is finding out schools that aren't doing well and thus need extra help. The problem is that it seems like, rather than actually helping them, the reaction to this information is to tell them to do better and then shut them down if they don't. This is a fantastically ineffective way to go about improving education. It'd be nice if we could just change how we're doing things now rather than continuing to pursue this worthless goal of comparing everyone. Wow. This Julian character seems to put a lot of emphasis on standardized tests. I disagree with him completely, as you seem to have. What are we going to find out if we have a perfect national standardized test to assess how students are doing? Oh, it turns out their not doing well, lets concentrate on improving our education program. GREAT. We could just concentrate all this standardized testing effort on teaching kids and we won’t have need for a test to tell us to teach them better because we’re already doing it! The only useful thing I can see that we gain from all this testing is finding out schools that aren’t doing well and thus need extra help. The problem is that it seems like, rather than actually helping them, the reaction to this information is to tell them to do better and then shut them down if they don’t. This is a fantastically ineffective way to go about improving education. It’d be nice if we could just change how we’re doing things now rather than continuing to pursue this worthless goal of comparing everyone.

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