'SCANTRON' photo (c) 2008, aaron_anderer - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

Something must be in the air these past twenty-four hours, as the idea of tests (or their alternatives) have been appearing in various media outlets.

Jessica Lahey, who I like and respect, seemed to start it off yesterday, with her Students Should Be Tested More, Not Less in the Atlantic. She tried hard to temper the headline with the content of the article, but Paul Thomas eloquently points out that the study she cited equated learning with memory retention (the lowest level in Bloom’s Taxonomy).

Then the Brookings Institution went completely off the rails with a piece they titled Test More, Not Less. They didn’t even try to mitigate their headline (as Jessica did).

Here’s the tweet I sent out in response to the Brookings article:

 

Happily, also today, the wisdom in Paul Thomas’ post was reinforced by yet another piece published on testing — this time, however, it offered an alternative: School without Regents exams says mayor should spread its model — a model of portfolio assessment.

You might also be interested in:

The Best Articles Describing Alternatives To High-Stakes Testing

My Best Posts On How To Prepare For Standardized Tests (And Why They’re Bad)