The public schools of Scotland have decided to take a different path, one that rejects the Anglo-American obsession with testing and standards.
“In the same week that Britain’s education minister, Michael Gove, announced yet another measure to make the national exams taken by high school students in England more rigorous, their counterparts in Scotland were taking a curriculum in which national exams for 16-year-olds had been abolished.”
Said one educator:
“Some people believe that increasing assessment increases standards, but we’ve moved away from that,” said Barry Smedley, the school’s deputy head. “It used to be that only students who did well on exams were thought of as the smart ones. But we’ve learned that there are different kinds of smart, different kinds of intelligence.”
“The changes mean a slightly longer school week, and more time for music, drama, sports and community service: precisely the areas that have been squeezed in England by the need to prepare students for so many exams.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ah. Proud to be of Scottish heritage!
It’s a brabricht moonlicht nicht.
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The Scottish seem to understand that teaching a child is an art that requires no boundaries. They believe a child should receive a balanced education that includes music, art and community service. That is so cool.
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Sanity from a national education administrator!!! Am I dreaming?
Creating time in the schedule for real learning, recognizing that learning is multidimensional, and that many of those dimensions cannot be measured by a standardized test . . . . this is so, so wonderful.
It’s time we overthrew our EDUCRATZIS and put people with these kinds of understandings in charge!
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Well… Diane, if you won’t take over Arne Duncan’s job… can we hire him?
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Lets raise a fund to send Arne to Scotland and Finland.
He might learn something new.
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I highly doubt Duncan’s ability to learn anything new at this point and time, you know the ol’ “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” especially when the person filling the food bowl refuses to attempt to teach the old dog. (And my apologies to all old dogs for my comparing you to Duncan).
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If Arne were to learn from the examples of Scotland and Finland, he would then no longer be an appropriate tool for carrying out the design for the training of the proles.
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Arne makes at least double, if not triple my teacher salary. He should go, but pay his own way. Perhaps maybe he’ll appreciate it more if it’s not paid for by others.
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Yes, and make it a PERMANENT trip!
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I’ve always been impressed with the sensible Scots.
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This is somewhat like the old Ethical Culture philosophy which turned our many talented students.
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: )
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Summative testing is an INHERENTLY AGGRESSIVE ACT.
It establishes the tester as arbiter and gatekeeper, and
t narrows attainment to that measured by the test.
I.Q., for example, can ONLY be defined as “that which is measured by I.Q. tests,” and intelligence is far, far, far more variform than any test of it that could be designed.
There is a possibly apocryphal, oft-told story about the great Harvard scholar George Lyman Kittredge, who never obtained a Ph.D. that illustrates well, I think, an appropriate attitude toward those who would presume to test. I heard the story, years ago, from my great teacher Donald Gray at Indiana University. A professors asks Kittredge why he doesn’t simply sit for some university’s Ph.D. examinations, for clearly, Kittredge would sail through them. Kittredge replies, “Which of you is going to test me?”
Those of us who care about teaching and who take pride in our accomplishments as teachers and learners need to start calling out the testers and evaluators for their PRESUMPTION.
Who are you, indeed, to test me and my teaching methods with your ignorant, childish evaluation checklists? to test my students via instruments as laughably crude as these national tests based upon your backward, simple-minded “standards”? to take time away from the important work I am doing with this nonsense?
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“Summative testing is an INHERENTLY AGGRESSIVE ACT.”
Yes and is inherently causes violence to the test takers by it’s invalid nature. The same for summative evaluations for those being evaluated.
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Why not allow summitive testing as an alternative to teacher determined grades? It seems to me that you might want to allow students a variety of ways to demonstrate academic excellence, especially adolescent males.
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You always have such reasonable ideas, teachingeconomist. Bravo!
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From your lips to Linda’s (among others) ears.
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Voluntarily embraced alternatives. Yes, yes, yes!
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“Why not allow summitive testing as an alternative to teacher determined grades?”
TE, what is your definition of “summative testing”? What is the whole process of “summative testing”?
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What I had in mind was the set of exams that might be used in the college admission process. Sat PSAT, SAT, ACT, SAT subject exams, AP.exams, etc.
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Well, all those have all the errors inherent in the process of developing, giving and disseminating the results that Wilson has shown to invalidate any conclusion drawn from the process. Start with an invalidity end with an invalidity so the “summative” testing is garbage also.
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Why just adolescent males….merely because YOU don’t have a daughter?
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Not because I don’t have a daughter, but because there is increasing evidence that teacher assigned grades for boys under predict alternative measures of academic performance. The usual explanation is that boys do not do as well in comportment than girls.
Here is one study:http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/why-girls-do-better-in-school-010212/
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We don’t assign grades; they earn them.
I would happily give up a number and point system for a narrative of skills gained, strengths, weaknesses, future goals, recommendations, etc. I would also invite each student to add to their own goals and thoughts to such a report, including an assessment of their teacher(s).
Your “research” seems to fit the situations that you have encountered while raising your son(s). There are many other perspectives.
We all have children, those we raised in our homes, as well as the thousands we take care of in our schools. Focusing exclusively on my two would be a very narrow perspective.
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It is not my research. The research was done by faculty at the University of Georgia and Columbia University.
Universities see the impact of these grading practices, and it has had an interesting impact on the social life of undergraduates. Here is an article from the New York Times about UNC Chapel Hill. That school is apparently about 60% female, just a little above the national average of 57%.
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I should have said the “research” you cherry pick. You can always find “research” on both sides of an issue. That’s your only response?
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I would be pleased to read the research on the other side. Could you provide a link?
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No
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Perhaps a citation instead? I am always interested in seeing a variety of viewpoints.
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The difference between a voluntarily embraced alternatives–let me show you what I can do IN THIS WAY–and mandatory, across-the-board measures is ALL the difference.
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“Who are you, indeed, to test me and my teaching methods with your ignorant, childish evaluation checklists? to test my students via instruments as laughably crude as these national tests based upon your backward, simple-minded “standards”? to take time away from the important work I am doing with this nonsense?”
Exactly!!
Isn’t one of the seven deadly sins “hubris” (Greek) or “pride” (Latin)?
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Monotheistic religion was a child of the city state. Large-scale agriculture required organization and centralization, and one way to get that was to have a powerful centralized authority–a centralized granary, administrators of that granary, warriors to protect it, etc. Monotheistic religion was a reflection and servant of that centralized model. According to the monotheistic religions, everything is organized according to great chain of being. Ultimate authority rests with the one god and is delegated to the king, his embodiment and instrument on Earth. It’s no accident that the first well-preserved set of laws, the Code of Hammurabi, invokes the divine authority as sanction for the king’s authority to promulgate law.
Since the priestly caste existed to prop up the centralized authority, it’s hardly surprising that the priests would make pridefulness a sin. Listen up you slaves, don’t start getting too prideful or we’ll have to smite you.
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cx: comma after Ph.D., above. No s after professor
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It’s just so nice to hear someone say something so practical.
“More time…”
It’s the cost they never measure, our “data driven” privatizers. TIME spent on these gimmicks and fads.
My youngest is 11. He’ll be the fourth child through our public school system. His older brothers and sister had band or orchestra or chorus and art and field trips.
I’m afraid his school days will be much grimmer than that, if this continues. It’s a shame, because he LIKES school.
Hopefully people will come to their senses.
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The opportunity costs of all this nonsense–the test prep, the data chats, the tests themselves–are enormous. I grieve for the children subjected to this.
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How best to combat the fools who would subject our children to the tyranny of the test and reduce our teachers to the status of trainers of test takers? That is the question.
Certainly, DERISION is powerful. Even the mightiest fear social sanction, for they wish to be feared AND admired. Perhaps we should LOSE NO OPPORTUNITY to LAUGH AND BOO THE DEFORMERS OF OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OFF THE STAGE. When the the plebs and slaves dare to laugh at the emperor, the emperor is finished.
We should be laughing at those who take the ridiculous Common Core State Standards, and the tests and evaluation systems based on those, at all seriously. Utter fools.
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Robert,
Exactly right! Let no act that assaults our children and our treasured institutions go unchallenged.
A pox of shame on Bill and Melinda, Eli and Edythe, Barack, Arne, and Jeb!
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Or, do we concentrate on unmasking the agendas of those who are not fools, who understand quite well the lameness of the standards and testing deform but who are cynically manipulating it for private gain–to profit from their shoddy virtual schools, to shore up monopolistic control over sale of educational materials, etc?
A different tack, also effective, but requiring the exceptional skill and dedication of the muckracker. There are few enough of those, these days
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CX:
Or, do we concentrate on unmasking the agendas of those who are not fools, who understand quite well the lameness of the standards and of testing deform but who are cynically developing and manipulating national standards, national databases, evaluation systems, and the like, as vehicles for private gain–e.g., to profit from their shoddy virtual schools, to shore up monopolistic control over sale of educational materials, to ensure that their contracts for delivering their awful tests are made perpetual?
This other tack, also effective, requires the exceptional skill, dedication, and access to information of the muckracker. Social media, like this blog, is a perfect tool for this approach to stopping the deform. Many people, each with bits of the puzzle, can contribute to the ongoing expose. In other words, the muckraking can be crowdsourced.
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Interesting thought, that of “crowd-sourcing the muckraking”, Robert!
One might argue that is exactly what happens on this site, eh! So, thanks, Diane, bet you didn’t know you’re the lead muckraker.
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I believe that Diane is very much aware of this, Duane!
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I come to this site for sanity because what I encounter in my community amongst many professionals, including teachers, is that they believe the propaganda about failing schools and do not question what they are being asked to do.
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Beam me up, Scotty. The policy making mortals here in America are anti-education. Can’t take it anymore. Got to get aboard the USS Enterprise now. Scotty, do you read me?
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LOL
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Captain, we can move out of this system, there are no signs of intelligent life.
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ROFLMAO!
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