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omorkaSo, my adopted state's GOP has put its foot well in its mouth yet again; they've taken a controversial anti-critical thought stance. Which, despite claiming it was a mistake, they apparently can't fix until 2014. Kind of like the Legislature in general, honestly.
Honestly, their stance against higher order thinking skills (which they did not walk back) doesn't make any sense, either; assuming they're referring to Bloom's Taxonomy (and I can't find a reference to the HOTS acronym that doesn't use the Bloom's definition), they're talking about analysis, synthesis, and evaluation - and while I share a certain skepticism that "evaluation" should be the "top" of the chart, I am very much in favor of being able to use all three skills (as a higher-level math teacher, the vast majority of what I test falls into either anlysis, synthesis, or the next level down, which is application). I suspect that at least the religious-right end of the Texipublicans is terrified of their kids learning how to evaluate a proposition, for fear that they'll apply it to Bible study, but that presupposes that they already know they're wrong.
And the party that brought us the NCLB standardized testing system objecting to "outcome-based education" is whiplash-inducing. Granted that multiple-choice testing was not what the original authors of the various OBE programs had in mind - most of them imagined something closer to a portfolio of task- and performance-assessments - but the 50 statewide assessment systems required for those would be enormous.
Honestly, their stance against higher order thinking skills (which they did not walk back) doesn't make any sense, either; assuming they're referring to Bloom's Taxonomy (and I can't find a reference to the HOTS acronym that doesn't use the Bloom's definition), they're talking about analysis, synthesis, and evaluation - and while I share a certain skepticism that "evaluation" should be the "top" of the chart, I am very much in favor of being able to use all three skills (as a higher-level math teacher, the vast majority of what I test falls into either anlysis, synthesis, or the next level down, which is application). I suspect that at least the religious-right end of the Texipublicans is terrified of their kids learning how to evaluate a proposition, for fear that they'll apply it to Bible study, but that presupposes that they already know they're wrong.
And the party that brought us the NCLB standardized testing system objecting to "outcome-based education" is whiplash-inducing. Granted that multiple-choice testing was not what the original authors of the various OBE programs had in mind - most of them imagined something closer to a portfolio of task- and performance-assessments - but the 50 statewide assessment systems required for those would be enormous.
