Marion Brady, veteran educator and author, sent the following:
Old joke, also known by research scientists as “The Streetlight Effect.”
A drunk is on hands and knees, under a streetlight, obviously searching.
Cop: Lose something?
Drunk: Yeash. My keys.
Cop joins hunt. No keys found.
Cop: You sure you lost them here?
Drunk: No, I think I lost them across the street.
Cop: Then why are you looking here?
Drunk: The light’s better.
As the current, corporately engineered “standards and accountability” education reform fiasco makes clear, non-educators assume schooling’s bottom-line purpose is to maximize learner understanding of the core curriculum.
So “core knowledge” gets taught and tested.
However, schooling’s bottom-line purpose isn’t to maximize learner understanding of the core curriculum, but to maximize learner ability to think—to abstract, adduce, analyze, anticipate, articulate, apply, categorize, compare, contrast, coordinate, correlate, describe, empathize, envision, extrapolate, imagine, infer, integrate, interpret, intuit—just to begin a much longer list.
So, why don’t standardized tests test learner ability to think?
Because they can’t. Of the dozens of identifiable thought processes, only two—recalling, and to a limited extent, applying—are simple enough to quantify and measure with sufficient precision to produce a meaningful number.
Inescapable conclusion: Today’s test-based reforms are dumbing kids and country down.
Solution: Give responsibility for evaluating learner performance back to classroom teachers, along with classes small enough for them to listen to what kids say and read what they write.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As I have often posted, I agree to an extent on this…I understand that test-based accountability may not work. that being said, I think the only way that just giving assessment and accountability back to the classroom teachers will work is IF two things were to happen: 1) principals were to act truly as instructional leaders and be willing to write up/remove poor teachers not doing their work, 2) teachers were to view the profession not just as a waiting point.
there are many great teachers doing many great things. But on the other hand, there are some teachers that are not (they still see teaching as a profession anyone can do. I was sitting in a Starbucks yesterday AM where I saw a teacher grading. We chat a little bit about a recent letter to the editor in the Washington Post – it was about the yearly calendar – the gov sees lots of extra grading days, etc. as a waste in the calendar put in by union leaders. The author, a teacher, noted how she had 150 essays to grade and used the days wisely, etc. The teacher in the Starbucks and I both agreed that the calendar (starting after labor day) was not an ideal option. But we also agreed that there are some teachers that really don’t need or use the grading days for the real reason they are there. He even noted that there are teachers he works with who see teaching as a job to bring in the main money while they have their side gigs in real estate, etc(and no, this is not about teachers not making enough)
We both came to the conclusion that there must be a balance – there needs to be some accountability of teachers, but at the same time there needs to be some understanding of what teachers do. So…where’s the system that has that in place?
Testing does not bring accountability. Nor are there very many administrators competent to weed out the bad apples. Think about it. How many times have you criticised some teacher only to hear a student talk about the life-changing effect that person had on them. Teaching, like democracy, is messy.
Roy I’ve heard that a lot less than the students who complain about the poor job Mr or Ms so and so do every year…or actually as students they appreciate how Mr so and so makes their subject particularly easy to get A’s….only years later when they’ve had to retake the dame class in college twice so they regret how Mr or ms so and so taught
I have heard that story too. And many more. The most tragic tale I have is a teacher who mig have been the best and most committed person I ever met. Faced with a class of underpriveleged fifth graders all testing below grade level, he worked tirelessly foe a year, over burdened with 27 kids and an impossible mission. At the end of the year, they all tested at grade level. The teacher quit and has never gone back into the classroom, a tragic waste for a system that needs committed teachers.
You could say the system got the best for the children, but hundreds of other children might have experienced this teacher in the years that have followed if the layers of administration had just had the wisdom to create a sustainable excellence.
What has always been ignored is that there ARE ways for really poor teachers to be “weeded” out if administration is career-experienced, generally in-building, and allowed to stay in place long term and do its job. Once administrators in our district’s poorest schools began to be endlessly test-score blamed and changed up — sometimes two to three times in the same YEAR — there has been no stable system which might allow for any honest evaluations.
“As the current, corporately engineered “standards and accountability” education reform fiasco makes clear, non-educators assume schooling’s bottom-line purpose is to maximize learner understanding of the core curriculum.”
I’m not sure the rephormers do think that schooling’s bottom-line purpose is to maximize learner understanding of the core curriculum. I think many of them think that the purpose of education is (or, at least, should be) to transfer public money into private hands. Testing is just one convenient way of doing that. As is tech, as are charter/voucher schools, real estate schemes, vendor contracts, etc. The ways to profit off public education are legion.
So-called reform’s bottom line purpose is the bottom line; everything else is lies, camouflage, and misdirection.
Google Deliberately Dumbing Down.
When a VAMmer is all you have, everything looks like a fail.
Indeed!
Good one!
Love Marion Brady. Here’s more: http://www.marionbrady.com/Op-Eds.asp
High stakes testing with punitive consequences is an anathema to meaningful, comprehensive curricula. Standardized testing is not authentic accountability. The results merely sort students into socio-economic levels, and this information is already apparent. It is a waste of dollars that would be better spent on instruction. Many teachers have been bullied, threatened and fired from this false accountability, and students have been subjected to narrowed curriculum and endless test prep. Authentic education is a lot more than reading and math skills. Students need social sciences, humanities, the arts and even recess to fully express themselves and realize their potential.
Of course. These people like testing, well, here’s a surefire, simple test of both cognitive and emotional intelligence:
Question 1: Does this person believe that the current standards and testing regime is having a positive effect on US education?
Question 2: Does this person believe that the national “standards” are less than ludicrous?
Question 3: Does this person think that the current mandatory state tests are AT ALL reliable or valid?
Answer yes on any of these questions: remedial class for you. And please step away from any position of authority in PreK-12 schools.