(no subject)

"Now, we’ve all heard the criticisms of standardized tests, namely, that they’re not testing what’s important — that they reward superficial thinking and short-term memory, not higher reasoning, critical analysis or creative thinking.

But what if standardized tests are, in fact, testing what our society and our economy value most, the qualities that translate into higher incomes and more money? What if superficial thinking and facile reasoning and mastery of middle-brow facts really are keys to success? This seems to be true in politics, mostly, so why not in society at large? In that case, the argument shifts: It’s not that standardized tests are measuring the wrong things, it’s that they’re measuring what society values, which happen to be the wrong things.

Not that society doesn’t reward creative people or critical reasoners or intellectual outliers — of course it does. The problem is that its rewards go in far greater profusion to people who are none of those things but who happen to be good at taking tests."
http://blogs.burlingtonfreepress.com/highered/2012/01/16/what-if-standardized-tests-really-do-measure-what-matters/?odyssey=mod|homepromo|3