RE: Questions for today's discussion

"The draft Master Plan places a high priority on students and their achievement, which in turn influences the allocation of education funding,
      assignments of responsibilities and authority, and the overall state accountability system at all levels. A key requirement of the accountability
      components is data on student achievement that includes sufficient detail to permit judgments to be made." --and then comes the talk about standardized tests and measuring achievement. 

I have two points.  One is that it's easy to build into standardized tests a too-narrow view of what being an educated person is.  In particular, if we wish to educate for originality, for leadership, and for ability to criticize assumptions of the culture, standardized tests will be of limited value.  Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and most of the profound thinkers of more recent times are likely to have done poorly on standardized tests.  

    This worry about thinking of education in too narrow a way is an issue that shows up in the debate about the Master Plan--I'm gratified to see it.  It's fine to assemble comparative data so we have some clues as to what is going on, but they should not replace our traditional practices of grading and counseling until we can be sure they will allow us still to train for all the huge variety of goals our citizens have.  

     The second is that the whole business of measuring achievement is tainted by its coming out of a business-oriented model--TQM and that sort of thing.  How does one measure one's preparation to become another Socrates or Jesus or Buddha?  How does one measure one's preparation to become one of the contrarian artists or community rabblerousers we need to keep the political climate lively and honest?  The answer is that you find those things by finding who has done POORLY using the traditional measures, though even those results cannot be relied on.

     What I'm recommending is care and humility, which will increase our tendency to keep the Master Plan flexible.

     (I've written on related topics in the journal _Thought and Action_, an article on what education's for? The .pdf file is available in their archives at http://www.nea.org/he/heta98/f98-109.pdf )