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from youth (via Suli Breaks):

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part of interview series via Graham Brown-Martin – Ken Robinson on testing:

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no one is the same. no little boxes please.

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jan 2015 – Noam Chomsky on the dangers of standardized testing:

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Latest on the common core.. you decide..what about them?

[disclaimer: it took me 2 minutes to go to our district site, find this. i’m not fishing. broad daylight. yet – in the clouds of assumption/compulsion.]

[graphic links to page talking about just common core]

And a little experiment via Aaron in Providence – having adults take tests.

And an insightful post on huffington post – college board fails the test

And Zoe Morris – not taking test

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We have been viewing content as fixed, as definable. It’s been our measure of success for some time now. The web has opened up the world to us, it’s showing/teaching/restoring a more natural state of being. Specifically, it’s clarifying the difference between a pyramid and a network. It’s showing us that content is too big to know. [Weinberger] The web is helping us see that we were made for so much more than content. That allegiance to content is in fact – keeping us mediocre rather than breathtaking.

content is variable
*Standardized tests on content are no longer viable. Not only no longer viable, but often times inhibitive. For whatever reasons, more and more universities no longer require them for admission , will no longer accept AP as credit. Entire high schools are boycotting standardized tests. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming evidence of the destruction standardization has brought upon the human spirit. Yong Zhao has been researching one such standardized test, the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), the test we use to compare countries. Yong has found that students who score high on math, on the PISA, score low in creativity, entrepreneurialship, and happiness.

As hard as it might be to believe, perhaps the near future will be more about a non-linear portfolio and credentialing via community. Standardizing, while crimping out style, is also crimping the style of the places we are trying to get into, with those test scores. As a society, we have figured out how to do well on standardized tests. We’ve learned to cheat as a means of survival, we’ve learned to memorize as a means of getting by. We’ve gotten really good at it. But is that the it we want to be?

Eric Mazur shares his research/insight on AP testing, how he’d rather students came with a hunger, and a sense about, what you do when you don’t know what to do, ie: how you learn, than a 5 on an AP Physics test. In his research, students coming into Harvard with a 5 aren’t doing as well as kids who haven’t taken the AP test/course. Perhaps, evidence that we have gotten good at scoring high on tests. Perhaps, evidence that that isn’t the point.

process is fixed
The web allows for personalization,
which provides the optimal learning space,
making personal learning networks a viable standard for public education.

We need to remove the old means of assessing a student, a teacher, a school, a district, ……
standardized tests.
[note that tests as we know them are generally trashed after the fact… they are noun. 21st cent assessment needs to be verb… or we’re assessing the wrong thing. assessment from latin means – to sit beside.]

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Now that we’ve built an industrial solution for teaching in bulk, we’ve seduced ourselves into believing that the only thing that can be taught is the way to get high SAT scores. We shouldn’t be buying this. – Icarus Deception

alternatives…?

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what about standardized tests