Re: Teaching to the test

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

At 8:20 AM -0800 3/3/00, Arlyn DeBruyckere wrote:

> In Minnesota we even encourage teaching to the test.  If a student here gets a
> "5" on a AP test the teacher gets check for $50, $25 for a "4".  That is for
> each student, and our district just decided to match this because "it is a
> form
> of merit pay", of course only the teachers who teach an AP class even have the
> opportunity to get this "merit pay".

I haven't been following this thread, but I happened to catch Arlyn's
note. This is one of the most antiintellectual administrative excesses
I have ever heard of. There should be a test of intellectual sensitivity
required of any educational administrator.

I would love to noise this about here in British Columbia, but some one
of our provincial innovators might think of it as a good idea. These are
the same folks who, more than twenty years ago, eliminated plane geometry
from our school mathematics curriculum. In my opinion that was a greater
antiintellectual crime.

Leigh