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We can't value only what is easy to measure measurable outcomes may be the least important results of learning.

Alfie Kohn

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Alfie Kohn
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: October 15
Author
Teacher
Writer
Miami Beach
Florida
May
Outcomes
Important
Measure
Value
Learning
Results
Least
Values
Easy
Measurable

More quotes by Alfie Kohn

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How we feel about our kids isn't as important as how they experience those feelings and how they regard the way we treat them.
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Whoever said there's no such thing as a stupid question never looked carefully at a standardized test.
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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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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.
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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.
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Trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things.
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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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The race to win turns us all into losers.
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Assessments should compare the performance of students to a set of expectations, never to the performance of other students.
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Each time I visit such a classroom, where the teacher is more interested in creating a democratic community than in maintaining her position of authority, I’m convinced all over again that moving away from consequences and rewards isn’t just realistic - it’s the best way to help kids grow into good learners and good people.
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Educational success should be measured by how strong your desire is to keep learning.
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Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
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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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Grades are a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.
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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
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To feel controlled is to lose interest.
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When was the last time you spent the entire day with only 42 year olds?
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Standardized testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.
Alfie Kohn
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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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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