[Boatanchors] The ARRL's next move

[hwhall at compuserve.com]

The same sort of stuff is going on in the US.  What started out as an effort to assure HS graduates were equipped with a basic set of tools for life, & that schools could be held accountable if they didn't, morphed into lessons that focus on the basic tools testing.

 

 Wayne
WB4OGM


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Henderson <bill.henderson at ocdsb.ca>
To: Glenn Little WB4UIV <glennmaillist at bellsouth.net>
Cc: Boatanchor group <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Fri, Mar 2, 2018 7:05 am
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] The ARRL's next move

"Teaching the test" - an interesting phrase.I currently "work in education".The education dept. of provincial government (ya - I'm in Canada - checkthe callsign) established quality assurance tests a number of years agowith the aim of being reasonably certain that a student completing acertain grade level "knew" the same things as another student completingthe same grade level at another school or even in another part of theprovince."Quality control", if you will.Thing is - this became warped into a tool to judge the performance of theteachers - a class consistently having a low score meant the teacher wasn'tquite doing things right.So the teachers started teaching the test - how to pass a test.It's an ongoing battle that continues today.The results of the tests are used (among other things) to rate the schoolsand these results are available to the public.Parents use these as a guideline to select the "best" school for theirchild.It's not necessarily the best school for the things the kids are supposedto know, but often the one where teachers have been most successful in"teaching the test".Just my five cents worth... - Bill H. / va3hwa**********