Quotes & Sayings About Testing In Education

Third Wave technology will also change how we measure success in the classroom. What good is an annual standardized test, after all, once teachers and parents can get detailed reports with a wide range of metrics, comparing their students on a regular basis to others in their class or school or state? In this way, big data on individual students will do for education what standardized testing never quite could: bring quantitative precision to a qualitative learning process. — Steve Case

It is not the teacher's proper task to be constantly testing
and checking the understanding of the learner. That's the learner's task, and
only the learner can do it. The teacher's job is to answer questions when
learners ask them, or to try to help learners understand better when they ask
for that help. — John Holt

I knew that, in a large degree, we were trying an experiment
that of testing whether or not it was possible for Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education institution. I knew that if we failed it wold injure the whole race. — Booker T. Washington

This strange new test called PISA, which stood for the Program for International Student Assessment. Instead of a typical test question, which might ask which combination of coins you needed to buy something, PISA asked you to design your own coins, right there in the test booklet. — Amanda Ripley

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education. — Melinda Gates

Common Core reminds us what testing can do right. Modeled on standards of the world's education superpowers, questions demand critical thinking and creativity. Students are asked to write at length, show their work, and explain their reasoning. — Wendy Kopp

For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them. — Anthony M. Esolen

Without free speech one cannot claim other liberties, or defend them when they are attacked. Without free speech one cannot have a democratic process, which requires the statement and testing of policy proposals and party platforms. Without free speech one cannot have a due process at law, in which one can defend oneself, accuse, collect and examine evidence, make a case or refute one. Without free speech there cannot be genuine education and research, enquiry, debate, exchange of information, challenges to falsehood, questioning of governments, proposal and examination of opinion. Without free speech there cannot be a free press, which...is necessary...as one of the two essential estates of a free society (the other being an independent judiciary). — A.C. Grayling

Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education. — Diane Ravitch

Elementary and high school students will still be tested under the new law. There just won't be so much riding on the scores. Also the arts didn't disappear under the old law, No Child Left Behind. But, Christopher Woodside of the National Association for Music Education says with so much time spent testing math and reading, the arts suffered. — Elizabeth Blair Lee

PISA was developed by a kind of think tank for the developed world, called the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the scientist at the center of the experiment was Andreas Schleicher. — Amanda Ripley

We have to make education a priority, but all this debate about education and testing is almost beside the point. We only spend a fraction of the money on education that we spend on arms buildups. Under a Kucinich administration, education becomes one of the top domestic priorities. We put money into it. We cause the government to be vitally involved in it. And we make sure our children have the love of knowledge. — Dennis Kucinich

Africa is a huge continent; it would take several lifetimes of thousands of researchers testing in hundreds of languages to collect a valid sample of anything, especially IQ. Most Africans do their schooling in a second language, not their mother tongue. How many people would accept to be tested for their IQ level not in their primary language? — T.K. Naliaka

The question is not, Does or doesn't public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling. — Neil Postman

Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools. — Diane Ravitch

Will this be in the examination, Mr Hecker? was the limit of my students' interest in any given subject. If it was going to be in the test they took notes, if it was not going to be in the test they did not take notes. Their silent, depthless stares were unnerving. I told myself that they were not stupid - for how could the final attainment of thousands of years of human progress be stupid? — Tod Wodicka

I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew. To say you've got to inquire, you've got to be testing your knowledge all the time in order to be more effective in what you're doing. — Thabo Mbeki

We must be careful not to discourage our twelve-year-olds by making them waste the best years of their lives preparing for examinations. — Freeman Dyson

The students who feel alienated by current systems of standardization and testing may walk out the door, and it's left to them and others to pay the price in unemployment benefits and other social programs. These problems are not accidental by-products of standardized education; they are a structural feature of these systems. They were designed to process people according to particular conceptions of talent and economic need and were bound to produce winners and losers in just those terms. And they do. Many of these "externalities" could be avoided if education genuinely gave all students the same opportunities to explore their real capabilities and create their best lives. — Ken Robinson

If you could lead through testing, the U.S. would lead the world in all education categories. When are people going to understand you don't fatten your lambs by weighing them? — Jonathan Kozol

Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country. — Zephyr Teachout

The U.S. Department of Education changed the education privacy regulations in at least two crucial ways. Firstly, it increased the number of players that could have access to your child's centralized personal data to include, not just your child's teachers, but any organization or group tangentially involved in your child's education. This can include testing, technology, textbook, and research companies, just to name a few examples. Secondly, it no longer requires parent notification or permission when it shares your child's personal data with these chosen groups or companies. — Brad McQueen

Hence [through No Child Left Behind] the state has been given power...to fire all teachers and principles. So here we have an unusual case in which the students are engaged in the performances, but the high stakes have been displaced onto the teachers who are preparing their charges for the exams. — James M. Lang

Manuel was sent to Harvard, where he developed a profound contempt for American culture. 'The Americans,' he would say, 'brush their teeth before kissing and remember a page to answer a question. — Warren Eyster