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Other than the PISA scores comment - I agree with everything you've said. It's a multifaceted problem and, in many ways, the problems of schools are not strictl
by germinalphrase 8y ago
Other than the PISA scores comment - I agree with everything you've said. It's a multifaceted problem and, in many ways, the problems of schools are not strictly educational problems but the broad problems of society.
That said, educators are the tip of the spear - and I do believe that there is opportunity for additional technological mediation in improving the teacher's professional practice. It could also obsolete significant chunks of our multi-billion dollar standardized testing industry (a benefit to both the operating enterprise and the budgets of school districts).
- dahdum 8y agoMy concern is that without some form of broad standardized testing, we won't have proper metrics to measure the success of programs and/or teachers against.
- germinalphrase 8y agoI agree (though I challenge the utility of current standardized testing to fulfill that job-to-be-done). My position is that we are already paying tens of thousands of teachers to assess the ability level of their students everyday while maintaining a secondary assessment industry that is able to exist because teacher's assessments are not able to be trusted. If we can make teachers' assessments trustable (for ranking/sorting/certification of skill & knowledge) then we won't need the very expensive secondary assessment industry to nearly the same degree. Likewise, many of the negative externalities of standardized testing could be mitigated by ubiquitously assessing student ability rather than relying on traditional "snapshots" as is the status quo.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThe way we measure educational attainment across cultures is by PISA scores. The whole basis of 'US is doing worse than OECD or Greece' or whatever is based on PISA scores. It's very crude, but it's what we have.