Diana Ravitch is a perceptive critic of 20th century school failures. But she has not understood the new ways of learning when she writes here in the New York Times that national tests should measure our kids instead of leaving testing to the 50 states. Her theory rests on data that kids who do well on state tests often do not get scores as high on national tests. Perhaps that is because students are taught-to the state tests?
It seems to me that testing is mostly a way to prove the schools, not the kids. Testing presumes what is tested suffices for an education — and perhaps it did in a less knowledge-rich past. Tests have always been somewhat problematic because knowledge simply does not come in bits and pieces like a test must. Knowledge is a vast cognitive network now mirrored online. The education of the future will engage the virtual knowledge ecology. It is highly unlikely that school testing industry will survive in that ecology.
How the best knowledge gets to everybody to learn
