Tuesday, November 18, 2014

A teacher’s response to school reformers

From high-school English teacher Ian Altman: Seven things teachers are sick of hearing from school reformers (The Washington Post). Move past the listicle title and you’ll find a deeply thoughtful response to school reformers. One choice passage:

Educators talk about and analyze test score data, and supposedly let that data “drive instruction,” but the truth is that numbers and measurements gleaned from those tests are not data.

They are a flat, bleached replacement of data, because they replace the substance of learning with an abstraction, a false image of learning, much the way Descartes replaced the idea of physical things with the concept of graphable spatial extension. The acts of thinking, learning, and knowing, are not objects that can be replaced with abstractions about thinking, learning, and knowing. In that specific but crucial sense, all school test data are fake.
I wish I had had Mr. Altman for English.

comments: 4

Zhoen said...

Of if not exactly fake, then certainly delusional.

The Arthurian said...

I am sympathetic, but...

"Descartes replaced the idea of physical things with the concept of graphable spatial extension."

Is this part of the "people who like English don't like math" thing?

I wish I had Mr. Descartes for math.

Michael Leddy said...

I can’t imagine that Altman has anything against real data. I think his point is that standardized tests are not a measure of genuine learning. I’ll quote Jacques Barzun on multiple-choice tests: “Knowing something means the power to summon up facts and their significance in the right relations. Mechanical testing does not foster this power.”

I had Mr. Descartes for philosophy, but I liked Mr. Wittgenstein’s class a lot more. : )

Elaine said...

I would forward this to my state legislators, but they wouldn't know what the heck you were talking about. Sadly.
I wasn't educated in this state except for grades 2 through 5....and those *were* the good old days. Teachers knew their subjects (but, alas, were not proficient in all of them) and only every other year were the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills administered. That was appropriate testing--they were measuring the underpinnings for advanced learning, thought, and achievement.