I don’t know nearly enough to give a comprehensive answer, but a huge factor is Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric. The focus on standardized testing, and tying school funding to performance on those tests, shifted curriculum from actual education to teaching the test. Test-taking strategies become more important than knowledge, and what little knowledge remains is focused entirely on the topics that appear on the tests.
We started teaching kids how to pass tests, instead of thinking critically and annswering creatively (unless you were in certain schools). It also coincided with laptops and iPads becoming a big part of school time.
Charter schools also arrived around the same time and that’s a whole other can of beans.
How did No Child ruin education? I thought it was just national standardized testing?
I don’t know nearly enough to give a comprehensive answer, but a huge factor is Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric. The focus on standardized testing, and tying school funding to performance on those tests, shifted curriculum from actual education to teaching the test. Test-taking strategies become more important than knowledge, and what little knowledge remains is focused entirely on the topics that appear on the tests.
We started teaching kids how to pass tests, instead of thinking critically and annswering creatively (unless you were in certain schools). It also coincided with laptops and iPads becoming a big part of school time.
Charter schools also arrived around the same time and that’s a whole other can of beans.