Testing, the Chinese Way
Other educators recoil at the thought of more tests. “The Obama administration is using the power of the purse to compel states to add more destructive testing,” said Alfie Kohn, author of “The Case Against Standardized Testing” and many other books on education. “With Race to the Top the bad news has gotten worse, with a relentless regimen that turns schools into test prep courses.”
He said genuine learning in young children was a global process, while tests look at narrow and specific skills, and good teachers don’t need tests to know if a child is learning. He added that for young children, good test results were more a function of whether children can sit still or hold a pencil. “These tests are being added in the name of accountability despite the objections of early-childhood educators who say they have no place in the classrooms,” he said.
You idiot.
Test the hell out of the kids.
I once got 35% on a math test. That’s right — 65% of it wrong. It was probably the lowest test score that teacher ever gave in her career to that point.
I’m just about genetically wired to fail at math. I still make stupid errors with basic math (see prior blog posts elsewhere that attest to this; I will not point them out, let that be your test). If teachers had just said, “Oh, he just can’t do math, let’s leave him alone,” I’d have wound up as a stupid adult with zero appreciation for the beauty of math.
I sure as hell can’t do math, but I can at least understand its universality and how it’s used in quantum physics and how it underpins all of existence. I wouldn’t have had that at all if I hadn’t been tormented to do math for twelve consecutive grades (college was for art; there was no hard math there, except for proportions, a part of math I had learned and understood).
Self-esteem arises from accomplishment. It isn’t engendered by cooing over failure.
Those who say testing doesn’t matter should be ignored. They’re up to something that’s evil at the heart of it.