High-Stakes Flimflam By BOB HERBERT

[Demeter]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/opinion/09herbert.html?_r=5&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=login

It’s time to rein in the test zealots who have gotten such a stranglehold on the public schools in the U.S.

Politicians and others have promoted high-stakes testing as a panacea that would bring accountability to teaching and substantially boost the classroom performance of students.

“Measuring,” said President Bush, in a discussion of his No Child Left Behind law, “is the gateway to success.”

Not only has high-stakes testing largely failed to magically swing open the gates to successful learning, it is questionable in many cases whether the tests themselves are anything more than a shell game.

Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, told me in a recent interview that it’s important to ask “whether you can trust improvements in test scores when you are holding people accountable for the tests.”

The short answer, he said, is no.

[ixion]

1. I'm very glad I was in school when they still taught reading, writing and arithmetic

I empathize with kids who are going through school these days, because it seems like more of a socio-political indoctrination program than an education.

[Demeter]

2. You and Me Both

When my daughter was in Middle School, she was having trouble with math. With a BSEE, I thought I could help her. Turns out her textbook indulged in "touchy, feely" math. There was no logic, no method, no organization, no definitions or sample problems, and some of the problems had multiple or no answers whatsoever, because they weren't mathematical problems, but problems in thinking clearly on the part of the so-called authors.

And Ann Arbor prides itself on being an intellectual, college town. This crap curriculum put my smart kid into remedial tutoring to get some foundations of mathematical principles into her. She's still a bit phobic.