Jose Ferreira Quotes
I had started teaching because I love brainteasers. At some point, I had taken every standardized test out there - the SATs, the GREs, the GMATs, the MCATs. I just took them for fun.
Ferreira, Jose. "Why I Started Knewton." The Huffington Post, 12 Sept. 2012.
In the entire Finnish curriculum there is only one standard test required and that is in the last year of high school. Finland graduates 93% of its high school students compared to the 76% in the U. S. And Finnish students score Number 1 among all nations, much higher on International Math and Science Tests than American Students of comparable age. Test taking skills should not be confused with education. Tests are one indicator of student performance and the success of our home and schools in educating children. But in some areas we have improved test scores slightly but provided less education.
The testing movement that was a part of the so called educational reform of the George W. Bush Administration’s educational reform program that also had bipartisan support also had unintended consequences which some however predicted. Curricula changes and music, art, home economics, civics, physical education tended to get deemphasized or dropped as all schools were focused on was the test performance; school economic and ethnic segregation became worse as publicly available test scores by school and district tended to persuade parents who could afford alternatives (including moving) would avoid poor testing schools. By conditioning school funds and teacher salaries on test performance, teachers tended to avoid the poorer testing schools in favor of those with students who would score well. Perhaps worst of all cheating was rampant, where teachers and school administrators would change test scores or get teachers the tests just before they were administered. School systems misclassified poor testing students as having mental or learning deficiencies so they would not bring the average down. Some states and large school systems, would encourage poor testing students to drop out of school so they would not bring down the average.
Jose Ferreira is an American entrepreneur and Founder and former CEO of Knewton.
