Category Archives: testing

All kids are born geniuses.

Check out this short interview with Michio Kaku about how schools and standardized testing destroy the natural curiosity towards science that we are all born with. As the father of two blossoming scientists I care a lot about this.

When we hit the danger years. The danger years of junior high school and high school. That’s when it’s (scientific curiosity) literally crushed out of us. ‘Every little flower of curiosity’ said Einstein, ‘is crushed by society itself’.”

Watch it all.

We need to reverse this trend! Let students DO science and not just rigged labs that the teacher knows the results. Let students apply scientific method to problems they care about and attempt solutions.

What to Obsess Over

I stole this title and post from Seth Godin’s blog today. He writes about businesses focusing on direct marketing techniques instead of customer satisfaction. Here is an excerpt that I have edited for schools:

“I think for most businesses schools that want to grow improve, it’s way too soon to act like a direct marketer politician/edu-reformer and pick a single number (standardized test score) to obsess about.
The reason is that these numbers demand lead to that you start tweaking cheating. You can tweak cheat a website test or tweak cheat an accounts payable policy students by test prep and make numbers go up, which is great, but it’s not going to fundamentally change your business school.
I’d have you obsess about things that are a lot more difficult to measure. Things like the level of joy or relief or gratitude your best customers students feel. How much risk your team is willing to take with new product launches projects to personalize instruction. How many people parents recommended you to a friend today…
What are you tracking?”