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This hyper-focus on test scores worries me. The most important things for kids to be learning are not necessarily things that lend themselves well to multiple c

This hyper-focus on test scores worries me. The most important things for kids to be learning are not necessarily things that lend themselves well to multiple choice questions. And it's distorting the ways that kids are being taught in ways that, at least according to the small amount of research I've looked into on how people learn, may very well be actively harmful. The single biggest problem in the US educational system is that the people in charge of educational policy need to stop and have a nice thoughtful think about the streetlight effect.

rimliu 7y ago
A bit of topic, but thank you for helping me to find out that one of my favorite anecdotes has a name (and even Wikipedia entry!)
ansible 7y ago
Agreed. This is all crazy what we've been doing to the educational system for the last 30 years, and if we can produce functioning adults from it, it will occur despite the emphasis on test scores, rather than because of it. We had one of the finest education systems in the world, and we're taking all the wrong lessons from other developed nations on how to "improve" it. And in the mean time, we're causing severe burnout among all the hard-working and passionate teachers who are on the front lines of trying to deal with all the issues with the educational system today.
- Coffeewine 7y ago
  So this may be a dumb question, but by which metrics did the united states have one of the finest education systems in the world?
  - hereme888 7y ago
    The one by which all the best students in the world tend to want to get into our universities. Our Ivy leagues are still generally the most resourceful, best equipped, and best staffed in the world. It's changing though.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    Originally, simply having one at all qualified it. I believe the idea of common schools originated in the USA, or at least it did as far as Western countries are concerned. Well into the 19th century, the European attitude was that parents were responsible for providing for their own children's education, and nobody else's. Working-class children were largely shut out. More contemporarily, the US is still in the top 10 by at least some rankings. But talking about those rankings doesn't sell ads or get the voters riled up or help rich parents feel good about all the money they're spending on private schools, so there's a tendency to cherry pick the rankings where the US is merely in the top 10%. Ideally followed by intensely fetishizing Finland. (Fetishizing Australia, which tends to rank even higher than the nordic countries, never seems to happen. Funny, that.)
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  Specific anecdote: I've been acquiring a new language over the past year or so. I went from beginner to a decent (for my purposes) level of fluency in about a year. The other day we had a friend we hadn't seen in a while over for dinner. She's a school teacher in the very language I had been learning, so, naturally, the bulk of the dinner conversation between us proceeded in that language. And, naturally, she commented on my rapid progress, when most her students can't read a comic book after eight years of study, and wanted to know more about my study technique. I kept it positive because I didn't want to trash her whole career, but I can say that my only real secret sauce was that I studiously avoided just about every practice in mainstream language education. I didn't do what schools do, and I didn't do what Duolingo and Rosetta Stone do. Because, at the start, I spent a while reading up on the academic research on how people learn new languages. There's a lot of it, it's about as well established as any sub-field of psychology can be, and it is, to a remarkable degree, summarily ignored. The mainstream has no choice but to ignore it, because most of what's been discovered does not lend itself well to the establishment of standardized curricula or easy, objective assessment criteria. That means schools don't want to take that advice because it's incompatible with their mandate to assign letter grades, and Duolingo doesn't want to take that advice because it's impossible to gamify.
  - wrinklytidbits 7y ago
    do you have any articles that summarized the research or that you thought supported your learning style the best. I'm curious and I would like to know more about what you did versus mainstream grading/gamification please.
    - mumblemumble 7y ago
      I don't know of any good summaries offhand, but you can probably find something good if you google "comprehensible input".
  - reubenswartz 7y ago
    Well don't leave us hanging-- what's the secret sauce? ;-)
- tcj 7y ago
  I couldn't agree with this thread more. "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" by Neil Postman is a wonderful read that addresses how our obsession with grades, courses and syllabi is completely contrary to helping people learn.
nopinsight 7y ago
As a long-time educator, I would say that this depends very much on the test and most tests do have fatal flaws that they reward rote memorization of facts, formula, or process. (Needless to say, I am also against that kind of tests.) I have looked at some PISA questions and they seem to be well-designed. In addition, some questions require written answers. Many PISA questions contextualize academic knowledge in real-world scenarios such as questions about purchasing apartment or intravenous drip rate in medical infusions. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2012-2006-rel-items-maths-ENG.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2012-2006-rel-ite... A question in reading test is about the effect of the word 'free' in making purchasing decisions: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/PISA%20for%20Schools%20sample%20test%20items.pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/PISA%20for%20Schools%20sa... A question on bee colony collapse disorder in Science test: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/PISA2015-Released-FT-Cognitive-Items.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/PISA2015-Released-FT-... No test can substitute for one-on-one evaluation, but one-on-one evaluation is also subject to (different) biases. As far as standardized tests go, these are pretty good ones. More importantly, I believe the results would likely correlate relatively well with how well the students apply knowledge in real-world settings.

rimliu 7y ago

A bit of topic, but thank you for helping me to find out that one of my favorite anecdotes has a name (and even Wikipedia entry!)

ansible 7y ago

Agreed. This is all crazy what we've been doing to the educational system for the last 30 years, and if we can produce functioning adults from it, it will occur despite the emphasis on test scores, rather than because of it. We had one of the finest education systems in the world, and we're taking all the wrong lessons from other developed nations on how to "improve" it. And in the mean time, we're causing severe burnout among all the hard-working and passionate teachers who are on the front lines of trying to deal with all the issues with the educational system today.

Coffeewine 7y ago
So this may be a dumb question, but by which metrics did the united states have one of the finest education systems in the world?
- hereme888 7y ago
  The one by which all the best students in the world tend to want to get into our universities. Our Ivy leagues are still generally the most resourceful, best equipped, and best staffed in the world. It's changing though.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  Originally, simply having one at all qualified it. I believe the idea of common schools originated in the USA, or at least it did as far as Western countries are concerned. Well into the 19th century, the European attitude was that parents were responsible for providing for their own children's education, and nobody else's. Working-class children were largely shut out. More contemporarily, the US is still in the top 10 by at least some rankings. But talking about those rankings doesn't sell ads or get the voters riled up or help rich parents feel good about all the money they're spending on private schools, so there's a tendency to cherry pick the rankings where the US is merely in the top 10%. Ideally followed by intensely fetishizing Finland. (Fetishizing Australia, which tends to rank even higher than the nordic countries, never seems to happen. Funny, that.)
mumblemumble 7y ago
Specific anecdote: I've been acquiring a new language over the past year or so. I went from beginner to a decent (for my purposes) level of fluency in about a year. The other day we had a friend we hadn't seen in a while over for dinner. She's a school teacher in the very language I had been learning, so, naturally, the bulk of the dinner conversation between us proceeded in that language. And, naturally, she commented on my rapid progress, when most her students can't read a comic book after eight years of study, and wanted to know more about my study technique. I kept it positive because I didn't want to trash her whole career, but I can say that my only real secret sauce was that I studiously avoided just about every practice in mainstream language education. I didn't do what schools do, and I didn't do what Duolingo and Rosetta Stone do. Because, at the start, I spent a while reading up on the academic research on how people learn new languages. There's a lot of it, it's about as well established as any sub-field of psychology can be, and it is, to a remarkable degree, summarily ignored. The mainstream has no choice but to ignore it, because most of what's been discovered does not lend itself well to the establishment of standardized curricula or easy, objective assessment criteria. That means schools don't want to take that advice because it's incompatible with their mandate to assign letter grades, and Duolingo doesn't want to take that advice because it's impossible to gamify.
- wrinklytidbits 7y ago
  do you have any articles that summarized the research or that you thought supported your learning style the best. I'm curious and I would like to know more about what you did versus mainstream grading/gamification please.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    I don't know of any good summaries offhand, but you can probably find something good if you google "comprehensible input".
- reubenswartz 7y ago
  Well don't leave us hanging-- what's the secret sauce? ;-)
tcj 7y ago
I couldn't agree with this thread more. "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" by Neil Postman is a wonderful read that addresses how our obsession with grades, courses and syllabi is completely contrary to helping people learn.

nopinsight 7y ago

As a long-time educator, I would say that this depends very much on the test and most tests do have fatal flaws that they reward rote memorization of facts, formula, or process. (Needless to say, I am also against that kind of tests.) I have looked at some PISA questions and they seem to be well-designed. In addition, some questions require written answers. Many PISA questions contextualize academic knowledge in real-world scenarios such as questions about purchasing apartment or intravenous drip rate in medical infusions. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2012-2006-rel-items-maths-ENG.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisa2012-2006-rel-ite... A question in reading test is about the effect of the word 'free' in making purchasing decisions: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/PISA%20for%20Schools%20sample%20test%20items.pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/PISA%20for%20Schools%20sa... A question on bee colony collapse disorder in Science test: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/PISA2015-Released-FT-Cognitive-Items.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/PISA2015-Released-FT-... No test can substitute for one-on-one evaluation, but one-on-one evaluation is also subject to (different) biases. As far as standardized tests go, these are pretty good ones. More importantly, I believe the results would likely correlate relatively well with how well the students apply knowledge in real-world settings.