Has Competency Based Education Made the Opt Out Movement Passe?
Some have argued recently that the Opt Out movement is dead because it has actually become helpful to those promoting constant online testing, since it interferes with the annual standardized tests. Since the annual tests can be replaced by online monitoring of student performance, this will be the wave of the future. So we should stop organizing parents and students to opt out, and instead focus on the new dangers coming from educational technology.
There is a real danger here. I wrote a post more than two years ago, entitled “Classroom of the Future, Student Centered or Device Centered,” which warned of this. I wrote:
In this mode of instruction, these devices become the mediator of almost every academic interaction between students and their teacher, and even one another.Students are assigned work on the device, they perform their work on the device, they share work through the device, and they receive feedback via the device. What is more, the means by which learning is measured—the standardized test—will also be via this device.It is the appliance that now becomes “intelligent” about each student and the appliance is the vehicle by which lessons are “personalized,” because the appliance is what is keeping track of what the student is capable of, and where the student is weak.Of course the teacher has the ability to oversee and monitor the assignments the device is making, but the whole idea is to automate this process. And this is Has Competency Based Education Made the Opt Out Movement Passe? - Living in Dialogue: