Quote

When test scores go up, we should worry, because of how poor a measure they are of what matters, and what you typically sacrifice in a desperate effort to raise scores.

Alfie Kohn

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Effort
Raise
Poor
Test
School
Measure
Matter
Raises
Tests
Scores
Matters
Typically
Sacrifice
Score
Worry
Desperate

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

Image
The race to win turns us all into losers.
Alfie Kohn
Image
When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Punishment and reward proceed from basically the same psychological model, one that conceives of motivation as nothing more than the manipulation of behavior.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Grades dilute the pleasure that a student experiences on successfully completing a task.
Alfie Kohn
Image
The late W. Edwards Deming, guru of Quality management, once declared, 'The most important things we need to manage can't be measured.' If that’s true of what we need to manage, it should be even more obvious that it’s true of what we need to teach.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Trying to do well and trying to beat others are two different things. Excellence and victory are conceptually distinct . . . and are experienced differently.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Learning is something students do, NOT something done to students.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Being a team player should not imply a demand for simple obedience and conformity.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Someone who thinks well of himself is said to have a healthy self-concept and is envied. Someone who thinks well of his country is called a patriot and is applauded. But someone who thinks well of his species is regarded as hopelessly naïve and is dismissed.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.
Alfie Kohn
Image
If I offered you a thousand dollars to take off your shoes, you'd very likely accept--and then I could triumphantly announce that 'rewards work.' But as with punishments, they can never help someone develop a *commitment* to a task or action, a reason to keep doing it when there's no longer a payoff.
Alfie Kohn
Image
Students should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up they should have the chance to live in one today.
Alfie Kohn
Image
The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior.
Alfie Kohn
Image
To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum.
Alfie Kohn
Image
How can we do our best when we are spending our energies trying to make others lose - and fearing that they will make us lose?
Alfie Kohn
Image
Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
Alfie Kohn
Image
In outstanding classrooms, teachers do more listening than talking, and students do more talking than listening. Terrific teachers often have teeth marks on their tongues.
Alfie Kohn
Image
The overwhelming number of teachers ...are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.
Alfie Kohn
Image
John Dewey reminded us that the value of what students do 'resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater strain it imposes.
Alfie Kohn