INDEPENDENT SCHOOL Winter 2002-03 How Not to Get Into College The Preoccupation with Preparation By Alfie Kohn Education…is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. — John Dewey In 1981, while I was teaching at an independent school, this journal published my very first article about education. It was an ironic commentary, perhaps a tad … Read More
Education’s Rotten Apples (**)
EDUCATION WEEK September 18, 2002 Education’s Rotten Apples By Alfie Kohn Like other people, educators often hold theories about how the world works, or how one ought to act, that are never named, never checked for accuracy, never even consciously recognized. One of the most popular of these theories is a very appealing blend of pragmatism and relativism that might … Read More
Standardized Testing: Separating Wheat Children from Chaff Children
2002 Standardized Testing Separating Wheat Children from Chaff Children Excerpted from the foreword to Susan Ohanian’s book What Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002) By Alfie Kohn Of all the chasms that separate one world from another, none is greater than the gap between the people who make policy and the people who … Read More
Fighting the Toxic Status Quo
ENGLISH EDUCATION January 2002 “Fighting the Toxic Status Quo” Alfie Kohn on Standardized Tests and Teacher Education By Deborah Appleman and Micheal J. Thompson Q.: What motivates the movement for teacher testing? It sometimes seems as if it arises from a basic mistrust of teachers. ALFIE KOHN: Well, I think we’re living through a very dark period in American education where testing … Read More
One-Size-Fits-All Education Doesn’t Work
BOSTON GLOBE June 10, 2001 One-Size-Fits-All Education Doesn’t Work By Alfie Kohn People who call for national education standards may have either of two ideas in mind. Both are intuitively appealing, but neither survives closer scrutiny. The first meaning of standards has to do with outcomes: Here’s how well we expect students to do. Of course, all students deserve a … Read More
Two Cheers for an End to the SAT (**)
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION March 9, 2001 Two Cheers for an End to the SAT By Alfie Kohn One imagines the folks at the College Board blushing deeply when, a few years back, they announced that the “A” in SAT no longer stood for “Aptitude.” Scarlet, after all, would be an appropriate color to turn while, in effect, conceding … Read More
Teacher Won’t Administer CSAP Tests
DENVER POST Jan. 27, 2001 Teacher Won’t Administer CSAP Tests By Percy Ednalino Jan. 27, 2001 – A middle-school teacher in Greeley said Friday that herefuses to administer the Colorado Student Assessment Program tests to his students because they clash with his beliefs as an educator. This is the first time a teacher has refused to administer the tests, officials … Read More
Education’s Different Drummer
WASHINGTON POST January 9, 2001 Education’s Different Drummer Alfie Kohn Is Marching Against Standardized Learning, and He Has Gained a Nationwide Following By Jay Mathews Washington Post Staff Writer One day in 1967, a sweet-faced, bespectacled fifth-grader at Leroy D. Fienberg Elementary School in Miami Beach was given a class assignment. No one remembers what it was about, which is … Read More
Fighting the Tests: A Practical Guide to Rescuing Our Schools
PHI DELTA KAPPAN January 2001 Fighting the Tests A Practical Guide to Rescuing Our Schools By Alfie Kohn Don’t let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered. Every empirical investigation … Read More
Standardized Testing and Its Victims (**)
EDUCATION WEEK September 27, 2000 Standardized Testing and Its Victims By Alfie Kohn Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole. (Of course, on “The Late, Late Show,” no one ever insists that the monster is really doing us a … Read More