The other thing about testing is that it distorts curriculum.
It is not only about teaching to standardized tests, but it's the fact that curriculum is designed to teach things that are more easily testable: so non fiction wins over fiction, prose wins over poetry, everything quantifiable wins over everything non-quantifiable, the arts tend to get left out. Even in the sciences, testing tends to focus on facts and calculation, which is only one aspect of science. Worst of all, testing tends to reinforce the walls that separate disciplines.
My daughter spent a good deal of her life studying dance. Classical ballet, and then all other kinds. It was interesting that there were no tests other than performance, and performance was tied to what one was able to create with others, not alone. It was also telling that dancers who could do triple pirouettes were not necessarily better than those who could do doubles...that technique could only get you so far.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- A believer in measurement will say that the only problem with not performing measurements is that people will then have to rely on their "instincts." This label is of course a covert way of dismissing the "unscientific" ways in which we mostly make judgments. A good teacher knows which kid needs help with what material; a good baseball player knows the pitch that will allow for hitting the sac fly the team needs; a good poet knows a lousy line. I am aware that the word *good* in all those clauses is begging a question, but no one has devised a better test for any of these "skills" than the fact that the people who are called upon to make the judgments (and millions of others) do make them with a reasonable degree of success. There are narrowly defined areas in which an algorithm will assist a practitioner in making a judgment (the recent use of checklists by doctors is probably a good example), but most people who want more testing have something to sell---look at the schools.