RE: The Wrath of Kohn

["Aidan Ward" <aidan_ward@antelopes.com>]

Denizens,

Robert Crow asks:
"My question to the group:  How can you have accountability without
testing?
 How can you know is education is taking place and that students are
being
prepared for life long learning without testing?"

This is a leading question. We could think about the accountability of:

The teachers for using contact time and resources effectively
The testers for establishing a context in which education was still
possible
The administrators for finding an effective level of resourcing and
maintaining the working environment
The children for indicating when what was being provided was
inappropriate to their needs
The parents for enabling their children to get something out of school
The curriculum developers to keep pace with relevant subject matter and
approaches
The politicians for making space for deep issues to be dealt with
properly
Society for valuing education above rote learning and docility

We could also think about whom that accountability might be to. Who
shapes the aims?

My appreciation of this question from a UK angle is that accountability
actually means blaming and that the standard of education as distinct
from cramming has gone down markedly in recent years. I'm with Alfie
Kohn in my analysis of the data.

If you think laterally about this I think you would come up with some
notion that only the students can know about their preparation for life
long learning though teachers get second hand information. In a healthy
system we would expect to see robust involvement of students and parents
in shaping and reshaping the meaning of education. By that I mean
political conflict and questioning the basis and ethics of knowledge. 

The relevance of Deming here is that he shows us how to discriminate
actual system behaviour from the rationale given by the powerful.
Nowhere is this more critical than in education.

Does testing give us any useful (i.e. actually used for constructive
ends) information?
If it does, is the value of that information greater than what we take
away from education by using tests?

Aidan Ward