Sunday, April 14, 2013

How to Stop Cheating on State Assessment Tests


The Wall Street Journal discusses here the steps various school districts have taken to control cheating on assessment exams.

As a teacher for 37 years, I always kept in mind that life does not present adults with multiple choice tests.  In the workplace, and at home, we have to work on project, or figure out new ways of doing things, or sometimes just follow a set procedure.  But we don’t have bosses or customers who say, “Tell me which of these answers in correct.”

We stop cheating when we revamp education.  Kids don’t need a body of knowledge;  they need to know how to find solutions to problems, to complete projects, to process large amounts of information.  To see if our students will be successful as adults, we have to assess these capabilities—not the ability to do well on a paper and pencil test.  And it’s quite hard to cheat when demonstrating these kinds of abilities.

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