Monday, August 14, 2006

A schoolhouse of Davids?

It's hard to go wrong with Stuart Buck's blog, which always has a number of interesting posts. But this one made me think.

In it we heard the typical lament of "teaching to the test". That's only a problem if a) the test is lousy, or b) you resent the idea of having your performance measured, as education establishment personnel always seem to do.

It's not that they have no case at all - you sure can't test everything with true/falses, multiple choice, or the various other types of questions you can grade with a computer. We still need the kinds of insights that only human brains can provide. And to keep the system honest, we need this input from outsiders.

And nowadays we have cheap telecommunications and plenty of people with the skills needed to provide the kind of grading we need (seniors, perhaps). Could such testing be outsourced?

No comments: