re: 9 reasons why public educ fails

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but science and technological progress depend on the ability to THINK AND CONCEPTUALIZE rather than just to memorize, and the future competitiveness of this country depends on having people who can do so.

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I think you're both right and wrong. We're pushing conceptualization WAY too early in schools before the basics are grasped. Students can't conceptualize what they don't have a firm foundation of.

Obviously we aren't going to solve the parent problem, which is probably the largest issue in school. But what we can do is change this culture of standardized testing that has absolutely killed education. We need to decide what things are valuable enough for students to learn to be successful in society, decide what that kind of success looks like, and then design a non-standardized assessment (think project or portfolio-oriented assessment) to evaluate it.

But you won't get as many nifty grafts and split-second data by doing that. All of the accountability proponents are going to have to understand and be comfortable with that.