This is Your Brain on Test Scores
There are two seemingly unrelated columns in today’s Opinion page of the New York Times that provide a crisp summary of where we stand in our current thinking about school reform — and where we need to go.
The first is a piece about charter schools in New York City, in which the editors reference “a national studyfinding that only 17 percent of charter schools offered students a better education, as measured by test scores, and that an astounding 37 percent offered a worse one.”
This is not the first time the Times has uncritically conflated something as comprehensive as “a better education” with something as singular as student reading and math scores. I imagine it won’t be the last. But it is, thankfully, a funhouse-mirror brand of “business thinking” that is on its death bed. Indeed, it hasn’t
The first is a piece about charter schools in New York City, in which the editors reference “a national studyfinding that only 17 percent of charter schools offered students a better education, as measured by test scores, and that an astounding 37 percent offered a worse one.”
This is not the first time the Times has uncritically conflated something as comprehensive as “a better education” with something as singular as student reading and math scores. I imagine it won’t be the last. But it is, thankfully, a funhouse-mirror brand of “business thinking” that is on its death bed. Indeed, it hasn’t
