http://www.peterpappas.com/2011/07/teachers-have-courage-to-be-less-helpful.html
One of the upsides (or downsides depending on your perspective) to twitter is that the people I follow post really good articles and I know they are good articles, pre filtered for me.
“Unfortunately, most of our students get a steady diet of force-fed information and test taking strategies. We’re giving a generation of kids practice for predictable, routine procedures – and that happens across the “bell curve” from AP test prep to meeting minimal proficiency on NCLB-mandated tests.”
I was just posting on twitter this morning questioning the value of giving tests where we are afraid to give the test on a Monday because they will have forgotten it over the weekend. Or the validity of a test where the students learn it for the test and forget it. Did the test itself actually accomplish something? Can I really record in my gradebook that I taught and they mastered that standard if they can not remember it for even 2 days?
Peter Pappas beat me to the punch though and wrote an article that also calls this into question. I enjoyed the article, see the link above to read it yourself.
lhighfill Lisa Highfill
