[geeks] OLPCs for sale...

[Phil Stracchino]

wa2egp at att.net wrote:
>> Montessori and similar schools are very good, but tend to do poorly on
>> standardized testing, because they're not teaching the kids the ordained
>> test material ... they're teaching them how to think, how to learn, how
>> to be inventive and think outside the box.
> 
> Shouldn't the tests be a piece a cake for those children?  Or they teaching
> "higher" level thinking withuot the lower level thinking with it. Sounds
> just as bad to me if that is the case.

The problem is that many schools, to score well on the standardized
testing, are teaching ONLY the material that will be on the test, and
drilling it over and over to try to maximize their scores to get more money.

When you compare to many schools that are teaching "These will be the
questions that are on the test", or at least focusing tightly on the
material they know the test will cover, a school that's teaching more
broadly focused material emphasizing teaching the students to think for
themselves is likely to not do as well.  On the other hand, when the
Montessori (etc) kids come up against something new they've never
encountered before, they're going to have a fighting chance, while the
"taught to the test" kids are mostly going to be lost without a clue.


-- 
 Phil Stracchino, CDK#2         ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
 Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
 phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net   alaric at caerllewys.net
         It's not the years, it's the mileage.