Since I put my last Larry response out as a blog entry, I’ll give equal coverage to this one. You can read the entire conversation at First the Bad News and A Response for La Larry of 52. At any rate, we are all on the same side:
Larry,
Thanks again for the continuing conversation. I have suspected all along that we are very much on the same vein with education. I was honestly reluctant to submit that post, because I did believe that although we were speaking from opposite sides of the fence, we are probably sitting fairly close together.
I do believe that testing is important and that it is essential that we assure that all children know how to read, perform math, and write. I think, also, that there are other levels of learning that we need to assure, that can not be measured by standardized tests. We need to start having confidence again in our teachers to be able to teach and evaluate learning in these higher order competencies.
But the bottom line measure happens ten, twenty, and thirty years from now. Will the children who are in our classrooms now, be economically viable and personally successful in their adulthood, and able to support us oldsters as we have retired? That’s the question and that’s the goal. I believe that at this point, we need to be rewriting our curriculums with an unpredictable future in mind, figure out how to teach that curriculum, and then figure out how to measure its learning.
Again, I honestly thank you for this conversation. As you indicate, there is probably very little that either of us have said that both of us do not believe.