The reasoning behind national standards and testing follows a simple logic: How can we know how we’re doing without reliable data? How can we help the kids who are falling behind if we don’t know who they are?
Yong Zhao lays out the problem of national standards and testing beautifully in his blog post Arne Duncan’s Mistaken View of Education and NCLB.
No Child Left Behind is a topdown, industrial response to postindustrial problems.
Icanology is a postindustrial solution that will make the old system seem what it is: archaic and inhumane.
And it’s simple:
Restate the standards into icans. Let anyone write icans and attach, comment on and rate resources. Create icanographs of subjects. Let each person grow lifelong icanographies, personal pages for sharing and archiving icans earned, endorsed, written, etc.
Teachers can generate instant reports. Assessment becomes what educators call “authentic.” Evidence of accomplishment can be easily linked to icans.
Children and their parents can clearly see the gap between what is expected and what has been earned. They can find many ways to fill that gap.
Children can also leap ahead. They can tackle a reading list with book reports or move through a math level on their own.
They can get credit for work on multidisciplinary projects in other settings. A 12-year-old who produces a radio show for the Paia Youth and Cultural Center may earn icans for technology skills, language arts, civic action, and working with others.
Essential skills not honored in school, skills like caring for the very young and elderly, doing housework, working at a job, and behaving ethically, can be articulated and recognized. Endorsements for icans earned can come from teachers, librarians, youth center staff, and other community members.
If we get icanology right, it will go viral, from teacher to teacher, school to school, person to person, organization to organization.
Eventually more reliable data will emerge. Our measures of success will change. Maybe a new list of “standards” will shake down.
Most important, we will be positive about all learning. All will move forward and no one will be behind.
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