Way before Waze, I listened to traffic reports on my car radio whenever I had to drive to the airport. Over time I came to realize that the information they broadcast was frequently wrong: I’d be caught in a jam on a highway that the radio had just told me was in good shape or, conversely, I’d be speeding along on a road I’d been warned about. So why did I find myself tuning in again on my next trip? Similarly, why do I keep checking weather forecasts to help me decide when to take a walk with a friend…even though I’ve learned that these forecasts, too, are not very reliable1?
In short, am I really so addicted to data that I prefer misleading information to none at all?
This mea culpa is my way of reminding myself not to be judgmental about the following story, which I have told during lectures: It seems a group of teachers at a school in Florida were sitting in the faculty lounge, exchanging tales of woe about the state’s standardized testing regimen, grimly reviewing the ways it demoralized their students and impeded learning. As they were commiserating, the P.A. speaker suddenly crackled to life with an announcement from the principal: The school’s official test results from last year had just been released and they were much better than the prior year’s.
Can you guess what the teachers did then? They burst into applause.
I emitted a deep guttural groan when I first heard that story. After all, these teachers CONTINUE READING: Alfie Kohn: The Tests Are Lousy, So How Could the Scores Be Meaningful? | National Education Policy Center