History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
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Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Myths of Standardized Tests’ authors respond to readers
- 04-22-2011
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Guest blog by Phillip Harris, Bruce M. Smith and Joan Harris/Washington Post
We’d like to offer a couple of brief comments in reply to readers’ comments about a blogpost on The Answer Sheet about our book, The Myths of Standardized Testing: Why They Do’t Tell You What You Think They Do, and we also wanted to let everyone know that we’ve made the introduction available for download here at www.themythsofstandardizedtests.com. This chapter provides the background for our examination of the myths of standardized testing in more detail than Valerie could provide in the limited space of this blog. We noted a couple of recurring themes in your comments. The first is that standardized tests can be useful. We have no argument with that claim, though we would hold out for more information about the use you might want to put them to. If you’re going to try to judge how well Johnnie or Janie has learned the third-grade math curriculum, we think you’ll be disappointed and probably misled if the device you rely on is a standardized test. The domain of the content -- even in thrid-grade math -- is just too broad to be sampled by a brief selection of questions. (more...)
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