Today in Bad Edujournalism: Putting Lipstick on the Test-Prep Pig
I often have to make sure I didn’t accidentally click on an article from The Onion, but, once again, this is actually in Education Week: Standardized-Test Prep Isn’t the Big, Bad Wolf.
And the real clincher is the author: “Travis Coleman has been teaching standardized-test prep for more than 10 years and is the LSAT curriculum manager at Magoosh Online Test Prep in Berkeley, Calif.”
So, let me understand this. A test-prep careerist is given a platform in the top education publication in the U.S. to defend test-prep?
The commentary sets out to refute Sal Khan’s attack on the test-prep industry, establishing a dichotomy between test-prep that addresses “content” and test-prep that addresses “test-taking skills.”
First, let’s not gloss over Khan, whose homophone name captures perfectly what the Khan Academy is, a con.
Just as one example, Karim Kai Ani offers a substantive critique of the poor quality of the Khan Academy math videos, concluding:
Unfortunately, the media hype surrounding Khan Academy has created a level of expectation far beyond what it – indeed, what any person or website – could ever reasonably deliver. Reporters have confused journalism with sycophantism, and the entire narrative has become a head-scratching example of the suspension of common sense.The real problem with Khan Academy is not the low-quality videos or the absence of any pedagogical intentionality. It’s just one resource among many, after all. Rather, the danger is that we believe the promise of silver bullets – of simple solutions to complex problems – and in so doing become deaf to what really needs to be done.
But the Khan Academy in cahoots with the David Coleman SAT is an even greater con.
Now, to return to Travis Coleman’s defense of test-taking skills test-prep.
There is a serious core problem with high-stakes standardized testing that should be addressed: When a lackToday in Bad Edujournalism: Putting Lipstick on the Test-Prep Pig | the becoming radical: