"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Feeding the testing-industrial-complex

Published in Education Week: January 23, 2013,

To the Editor:

"Testing Group Selects Exam to Gauge 'College Readiness'" (Jan. 9, 2013) announces yet another test to add to the staggering pile of tests our students must take.

When will this end? Because there is no evidence that adding more tests helps students, and plenty of evidence that increased testing will be very profitable for those who sell the tests and supply the infrastructure for the required online testing, the obvious answer is that testing fever will end only when the greed of the standardized-testing-industrial complex is satisfied.

In other words, never.

Stephen Krashen

Professor Emeritus of Education
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, Calif.
Vol. 32, Issue 18, Page 22

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