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Saturday, June 2, 2012

Technocratic Groupthink Inflates the Testing Bubble - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

Technocratic Groupthink Inflates the Testing Bubble - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:


Technocratic Groupthink Inflates the Testing Bubble

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As I was taking a look at the latest report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, a disturbing thought came to mind. The NCTQ has prepared a report that criticizes schools of education for failing to jump on the "obsessed with data" bandwagon. You can just feel the irritation in the words of NCTQ president Kate Walsh when she says:
A lot of schools of education continue to become quite oppositional to the notion of standardized tests, even though they have very much become a reality in K-12 schools. The ideological resistance is critical.

As I wrote last Friday, this reminds me of a phenomenon called "Groupthink." I want to explore this idea a bit more, because I think what we are experiencing in education is actually a virulent and coercive strain of