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Don't let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
Truth
Size
Measures
School
Method
Precise
Gauging
Matter
Offers
Houses
Standardization
Teacher
Accurate
Standardized
Education
Near
Administered
Anyone
Test
Gauges
House
Offer
Remarkably
Tell
Tests
Measurement

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When we do things that are controlling, whether intentional or not, we are not going to get those long-term outcomes.
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In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long.
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Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.
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You have to give them unconditional love. They need to know that even if they screw up, you love them. You don't want them to grow up and resent you or, even worse, parent the way you parented them.
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If faculty would relax their emphasis on grades, this might serve not to lower standards but to encourage an orientation toward learning.
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Saying you taught it but the student didn't learn it is like saying you sold it but the customer didn't buy it.
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Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.
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Sometimes we have to put our foot down, ... but before we deliberately make children unhappy in order to get them to get into the car, or to do their homework or whatever, we need to weigh whether what we're doing to make it happen is worth the possible strain on our relationship with them.
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Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
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The value of a book about dealing with children is inversely proportional to the number of times it contains the word behavior.
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Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
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Independence is useful, but caring attitudes and behaviors shrivel up in a culture where each person is responsible only for himself.
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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.
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Social psychology has found the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.
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If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings, and grow.
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Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
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We have so much to cover and so little time to cover it. Howard Gardner refers to curriculum coverage as the single greatest enemy of understanding. Think instead about ideas to be discovered.
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We can't value only what is easy to measure measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.
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Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children
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A preoccupation with achievement is not only different from, but often detrimental to, a focus on learning. Thoughts and emotions while performing an action are more important in determining subsequent engagement than the actual outcome of that action.
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