The thread that especially caught my attention was the one on "High-stakes
Testing: Godsend or Devil's Work?" (to muse the tv talkshow genre) ... of
course, longtime addicts of this channel remember earlier versions of this
classic show.
My reprise (like doing a 3-minute _Hamlet_):
High-stakes testing is bad because the tests aren't good enough to base
human life-choice decisions on.
Test-based accountability is good because it enables us to pinpoint
resource-starved schools.
High-stakes testing is bad if test-failure only leads to retention, which
doesn't help.
The retention policy derives from linear, sequential, hierarchical models
of learning.
Linear hierarchical models of learning derive from and support stratified
hierarchical models of social order.
Reading the reprise may simulate my sense of the multilogue as I read it
continuously end to ... well there's never an end here, just a pause of
indeterminate length ...
And so from this way of reading, some sub-themes that might be worth
developing a bit more:
(1) Tests that play valuable roles in assessing/comparing schools or
districts may be dysfunctional when applied to assessing individuals. All
measurement processes are scale-specific. (And I personally take the
somewhat extreme position that what works sociometrically -- i.e.
statistical measures on the social scale -- does not work psychometrically.
Despite the fact that the mathematics looks identical, the logics are not
equivalent. Same syntax, different semantics. Asking 50 people the same
question and asking the same person 50 questions are not symmetrical
measurement procedures; they cannot have the same logic of analysis.)
(2) Neither retention nor social promotion make the least bit of sense in
terms of individual learning. What makes sense (within the linear model) is
an alternative route which diverges from the 'mainstream' and then leads
back into it. But while we can pretend that all happy learners are alike,
the fact is that (with apologies to Tolstoy) every unhappy learner is
unhappy in his or her own individual way. An exaggeration, perhaps, but we
would need several alternative streams at least. We have no model of mass
education in which such a solution is institutionally feasible. It seems
that it is the _combination_ of (or contradiction between?) a stratified
social order and its linear hierarchical view of learning on the one hand,
and a democratic impulse toward mass education (institutionalized along
Fordist lines) that creates this impasse.
(3) Modularization -- and if you think administrative convenience drives
this model, just wait until you see what the economics of the internet is
going to do with it! -- re-writes the linear hierarchical learning model
consistently with the prime principle of mystification of our stratified
social order (i.e. extreme individualism). This can and probably will lead
to a sort of laissez faire principle in education: get your knowledge
chunks any way and any where you can; if one doesn't suit, try another
(this model's alternative to the retention/social promotion dilemma); so
long as you pass the standardized exam at the end (or again and again along
the way; can't have too much freedom after all, people will just get lost).
[Please note: I am here channelling a voice I don't agree with.] This
market-driven model will converge much more accurately on what is needed to
pass the test (and only that) than does the present, highly
test-inefficient system.
On the feasibility of (deliberate) systemic change, I will maintain a
prudent trappist silence:
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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