I was doing my usual stopovers yesterday, surfing for education news and I came across a familiar sounding name in the Washington Post column of Jay Mathews.
A couple of months ago, Mathews wrote a column about how teaching to the test was no big deal and that most "good teachers" he had watched didn't really teach to the test at all, but rather, subsumed the sought-after material magically within a stimulating and personally relevant lesson. The students, according to Mathews, never even knew they were being prepped and landed safely in the "pass zone" as a result of their teachers' effortless efforts.
Well, wouldn't you know that a Kossack called him on it.
That's right our own TeacherKen is on the scene this week in Mathews' latest
column correcting and filling in the blanks for Wapo's intrepid education beat reporter.
Here's TeacherKen letting him on things in a kinder, gentler way than he does when blogging for keeps on DailyKos:
Multiple choice items can be quickly and cheaply scored, so we tend to rely on them far too much. I have had students who know how to address such questions (by process of elimination) who do successfully but who could never provide the answers on their own. Have they really learned the content being assessed? Are their scores an accurate measurement of their underlying knowledge? I think not. Conversely, I have students who truly understand the domain being assessed who get frustrated because they can recognize the existence of more than one technically correct answer or the erroneous framing of the stem (question) such that there is no correct answer. Does that shock of recognition negatively impact their performance? I am unaware of any serious exploration of this issue in the research literature.
By the way, that crack about TeacherKen enjoying the rough-housing here on Dkos: just a joke folks. He makes no bones about being a Quaker for God-sakes, and I've never seen him write anything gruffer than "Look up the research, pal".
And if anything in that blockquote sounds familiar, it may be because Ken first wrote that right here on DailyKos. So, how about that: the traditional news media is now going to the blogs for their content! (To be fair, Mathews column is on-line only.)
Anyway, short and sweet on this one. We've already hammered teaching to the test to death--though another couple of dozen bludgeoning remarks never hurts. I just wanted to salute one of the premier education bloggers anywhere on planet cyber-space. Good-job TeacherKen! I love you like a brother.