General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: OK. Obama/Duncan/Gates School "Reform" Model: The results Are IN !!! Today's NYT: P. A1 [View all]reACTIONary
(6,935 posts)...peer reviews are conducted by peers, not by random people off the street. But I don't believe, and you don't provide any reason to believe, that the sort of testing that is being used in the class room is being designed by "random people off the street" rather than educators and psychologist who are competent to do so.
And software testing is generally conducted by independent professionals, not those who wrote the software. For obvious reasons.
It is true that tests do evaluate a student's ability to take tests, however, I think it is wrong to assume that a student's knowledge and understanding have nothing to do with their ability to do well on a test. In fact, its just common sense that they are highly correlated. If you are able to get the right answer to a math problem you have never encountered before, and you can do this over and over for a wide variety of such problems, it seems reasonable that you do indeed understand math.