As I was cleaning out my school mailbox today, I stumbled across the following mailer from Scholastic — the ever-popular book and magazine company that serves a bajillion schools and students a year:
(click to enlarge)
Does that bother anyone besides me?
I guess whenever I see the word “IMPORTANT” followed by a bulleted list that STARTS with “Raise Test Scores” and ENDS with “Improve Understanding of Science Concepts,” I see ANOTHER reminder of our nation’s skewed #edpolicy priorities.
What’s frightening is that I’m SURE that Scholastic has done enough research to KNOW that putting “Raise Test Scores” first in their bulleted list is going to result in more opened envelopes that putting “Improve Understanding of Science Concepts” first.
Companies of all kinds respond to their markets, y’all — and Scholastic’s figured out that educators care first-and-foremost about raising test scores.
That should leave us feeling more than a little convicted.
#truth
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Related Radical Reads:
What DO We Want Students to Know and be able to Do?
Assessing Learning the Danish Way
