CURMUDGUCATION: Don't Be Fooled By This Proposal To End Testing

CURMUDGUCATION: Don't Be Fooled By This Proposal To End Testing

Don't Be Fooled By This Proposal To End Testing

Tom Vander Ark has a long and checkered past in the ed reform biz, and he is ready to cash in on the next big thing (he's been ready for a while), which is why we find him at Forbes proposing an end to standardized testing. Just to be clear from the jump-- that's not a good thing.

The article comes in two parts-- a pretty good take-down of the Big Standardized Test, and a pretty weak argument for the next reformster meal ticket.

Good schools know how every student is doing in every subject every day. They don’t need a week of testing in the spring to tell them what they already know.

True that. And here's an interesting way to summarize the way the Common Core testing bandwagon ended up in the weeds, while trying to pivot to his new product:

While most OECD countries have sweated validity (good measures of what’s important), the U.S. has been preoccupied with reliability (inexpensive measures of what’s measurable). The development of Common Core State Standards was a national effort to raise expectations and implement better tests. The addition of more writing made the tests longer and just added to the backlash against testing.

One problem with state-mandated tests is that they don’t take advantage of everything teachers know about their students. With the shift to digital learning, many students have experienced a big increase in formative feedback from adaptive assessments, embedded quizzes, and online resources like Khan Academy. All of these new forms of feedback don’t integrate very well (because we still  CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Don't Be Fooled By This Proposal To End Testing