<p>The most interesting thing about this article is the dozens of heartfelt tributes to him by former students in the comments section. I was lucky to have a couple teachers at the level of Mr Patten-- a History teacher and an English teacher whose classes made my thinking and accomplishments what they are today. I learned far more in those classes than any test could show. And the prep mandated by those tests would have crowded out that more important learning.</p>
<p>My H (son of that amazing English teacher) is now a science teacher. His classes are the science version of this guy’s classes, but every day more mandates to follow scripts, teach to the test, only cover the important issues (biochem, because everyone is going to go into pharmaceutical research, apparently), and ditch the messy questioning, critical thinking, observation, and free-form experimentation which can’t be quantified.</p>
<p>I hope he makes it a few more years, but the frustration is palpable.</p>
<p>I fear that by the time my future grandkids go to school, we’ll have killed off public education entirely, or left it to the provence of the mediocre and the compliant (which is essentially the same thing.)</p>
<p>As someone who believes that most projects are just busy work, I say ‘excellent outcome’. </p>
<p>But the question I have for such ‘teachers’ is what do they think that they should teach? Forge the test for a moment. What is the standard body of knowledge that a student in that classroom should know by the end of the year? And then the next question, how does one assess that knowledge?</p>
<p>It’s easy to blame standardized tests, but the fact is that the Education leaders of each state set the standard for the body of work that is required at that grade level. And sorry to say, to this ‘award winning’ lecturer, author, whatever, a “geographic magazine group” project ain’t in the ‘must know’ category.</p>
<p>Instead of whining about testing, perhaps this teacher should take his/her curriculum issues to the state educ board.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m with Bluebayou. I keep hearing about the travesty of “teaching to the test” and the teachers’ loss of opportunity to teach more creatively in approach and content.</p>
<p>But if the test is testing things that are important to know, then by all means, teach to it!</p>
<p>How a classroom learns the content can vary significantly. Maybe it’s the boring old textbook recitation way. Or maybe the teacher dresses in costume and brings the subject to life. Maybe there are extra projects that encourage critical thinking or maybe there aren’t.</p>
<p>So long as the student learns the material, I’m not too concerned with how they learn it. </p>
<p>There just aren’t enough hours in the day to learn the core curriculum and the “other cool stuff”. If something’s got to give, let it be the geographic magazine project.</p>
<p>I guess a fundamental question is if you feel school is about teaching a child a set of facts, and then testing if they retained those facts long enough to regurgitate them on an exam. Some people agree with this. Some people feel it’s about inspiring an interest in learning, hopefully making someone want to be a lifelong learner.</p>
<p>Personally, I feel learning the dates and names of twenty Roman emperors is less worthwhile than spending in-depth time critically analyzing two of their reigns. Or memorizing the periodic table is a less worthwhile exercise than performing an experiment to debug a common misconception, and try to demonstrate to students that just because something is accepted doesn’t mean it’s true.</p>
<p>If you guys read the comments from his former students, you’ll see that these were not boring, makework projects, and that they appear to feel that this class prepared them for higher education and professional careers better than anything else they did.</p>
<p>Multiple choice tests test multiple choice thinking. Like RacinReaver says, if that’s what you want in a population, fine.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t how I was educated, it wasn’t how my H was educated.</p>
<p>Yet we fare pretty well, all things considered (H–former physician now teacher, me–college professor.)</p>
<p>There are parents & teachers fighting back against meaningless testing.</p>
<p>Just as Patton Oswalt pointed out that in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings there were more people running to help, than running away, I also feel that people who are committed to children & education will still find a way to do that.</p>
<p>The ( one of ) test that our district uses was purchased when our (former disgraced late) superintendent was on the board of the company that produces the test.
So - uh conflict of interest & it isnt even a good test.</p>
<p>My younger daughters high school is spear heading a boycott of the test and has been joined by other schools around the city and the country.</p>
<p>If you are a highly-educated parent with kids in a good school district, this sort of testing makes no sense to you. However, this type of testing was really designed for bad students and/or bad school districts. It was meant to ensure that kids don’t graduate from high school without having any idea of when the Civil War happened or what it was about. This sort of thing is not all about you, or rather, is not all about the type of kids who have parents who are on College Confidential. </p>
<p>And not be be too sarcastic, but if your kids are so awesomely amazing and want the magazine project, then have them do that as well as the broad overview/multiple choice stuff. Yep, extra work. Shocker, I know. They might even survive it.</p>
<p>I feel that you can go pick one of many available curriculum sets and find the materials to cover. You can probably use anything from the last 30 years.</p>
<p>I used questions and answers for assessment with our kids. I asked them questions which required some thinking. If they gave me an answer which didn’t require thinking or if there were problems in their thinking, then I might have asked additional leading questions or provided an explanation as to what I was looking for. This is obviously a time-consuming way to assess but it made for lots of interesting discussions. You can get a better idea of your kids’ thinking processes in doing this. It’s impractical in a classroom setting because a teacher doesn’t have the time to do this.</p>
<p>AA–My H teaches in a Title One district (the same school our own kids went to). His students deserve just as much as any others to know what science is–observation, inquiry, experimentation, critical thinking. Not rote memorization.</p>
<p>The way you frame it, makes it appear to be either/or situation. But it is not.</p>
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<p>If they are so valuable (and work), build 'em into the state curriculum.</p>
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<p>Exactly my point. Standardized tests are used because they are much less expensive than the alternatives. </p>
<p>(Think about college admissions. Sure, it would be great for every applicant to be able to submit “portfolios and performance-based assessments…” instead of a SAT/ACT test, but how practical is that?)</p>
<p>The projects sound great to me, but if you’re not a project fan, just swap out the list of projects for a list of term and research papers and supplemental reading. Standardized test prep in place of reading and discussing “The Prince”, or working on historical position papers, sounds like a poorer education model.</p>
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<p>You’ve got it backwards. The broad overview/multiple choice stuff is the useless extra busy work for those of us with even mildly great kids. I remember a few years ago when the (wonderful!) English teacher at D1’s high school had to actually HIDE the copies of the Norton Anthology because they weren’t the authorized-for-the-masses English textbook, and the district wanted them removed from the classroom. If public education is going to become teaching to the lowest common denominator, look to see even more of an educational split between the haves and the have-nots.</p>
<p>garland, have you read today’s story about the high school student who unintentionally created a small explosion in her chem class, and is now being charged with a felony (for using a weapon) along with being removed from her school and enrolled in a continuation school? I’m guessing that wouldn’t be exactly the disciplinary result in, say, New Trier. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I’m not against oversight, not against reasonable amounts of testing, but I don’t like that the best teachers, even long time successful, experienced teachers, are being micro managed and told what to do, having every minute of their day scripted. It’s ridiculous. Quality is not rewarded under such circumstances. Blind obedience is.</p>
<p>An issue is that standardized tests and their effect on curriculum have a mean response. That is, schools where the parents are successful strivers who raise kids who are built to be successful are probably hurt by standards while areas of less successful families who place less emphasis on education are probably helped. </p>
<p>My kids went to local public schools that were as good as private school. They didn’t need standards because the kids, as a group, walk in with expectations and then compete to meet or exceed them. That is the school culture. Standardized testing has hurt it.</p>
<p>But go to another part of the city, not to a “bad” area but to a more working class town and I think standardized testing helps. My experience working with non-profits in that kind of place are that parents don’t have a clue about how schools work and place much less emphasis on educational achievement. They can use the tests. The parents could use them too but that’s another story. </p>
<p>Go to the really bad sections of the city and you see that tests are double-edged. They need them because they at least provide some structure which forces kids and families to learn in difficult circumstances. But doing poorly has consequences and tends to reinforce the anti-education mindset.</p>
<p>To go deeper, within a school some teachers are helped by standards while others are hurt and still others are both helped and hurt. This is not an issue of “policy” or “statistics” or “individual autonomy” as much as it reflects general reality. For example, some principals give more freedom to teachers, others less and that fits some teachers better than others. Some school boards do the same and that fits some schools and some teachers better than others. We cannot right size everything. It isn’t possible.</p>
<p>Lergmon–I agree with most of your points, but again, I think tamping down creative, intelligent teaching in “working class” towns is just as egregious as for the more privileged kids. It creates two-tiered education: inspired, intellectually-rich for the “upper class”, and a middle management education for the “lower class.”</p>
<p>My kids grew up in a blue collar town. My H teaches here. The idea that more scripted, rote learning will help these students more is, in my mind, misguided. Want to engage students who perhaps don’t have the same resources to be already engaged? Don’t weigh them down with mechanical, non-inquiry-based pedogogy.</p>
<p>If individual teachers are the problem, and I know they often are, standardized tests (which test the teacher, not the student, btw) will lead to the most mediocre teachers being the most drill-and-kill oriented. And when they get the right scores, that approach will be vindicated.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree, Garland. There is no way to have standardized tests for some and not for others in a sensible way. That works for some and not for others. And it does frustrate. But the bigger issue about teaching in the US is that we consistently choose to make it a 2nd class occupation. I mean localities and states consistently treat schools as cost centers rather than “profit” centers for their economic futures. This has become much worse since 2008.</p>
<p>An example of what I meant statistically is in today’s NYT. An article about water use for fracking notes you can look at the absolute numbers, which are small compared to total usage, and that hides where the usage is concentrated. The point is that water, like people, aren’t instantly transportable to where desired so excess water in one place is not the same as having enough water for fracking in the places where water is scarce. We can drive this kind of analysis down through the levels or we can look at top level numbers and learn different lessons from each.</p>
<p>The testing machine has nothing to do with teaching or learning. It is a huge money maker and companies like Pearson are running with it. Very profitable companies are recognizing continuous assessment as a cash cow and, if the results lead to more privatization, win, win. The same companies that are creating the tests and scoring them are creating curriculum to go along with the tests.</p>
<p>This link is an example of an administrator who believes in educating the whole child and sets his priorities accordingly.
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<p>Yes. Yes. Yes.</p>
<p>A good education is only partly about learning the “right” stuff and knowing when the Civil War was. An excellent education teaches children how to THINK. Remember that? Thinking? It was awesome.
“Projects” are not always as they appear. A teacher who gives the student choices and inspires them to inquire and question and research is helping that child to become a thinker, a problem solver. That teacher is pushing that child toward the higher order thinking that everyone keeps talking about but nobody supports. The highest of those is Creativity.</p>