The Slippery Slope of Standardized Testing

What happens when K-12 students, trained to fill in bubbles on high stakes standardized tests, go off to college? They expect the same kind of education: "Tell me what I need to know for the exam." What happens to college professors who want their students to think critically? They might lose their jobs.

Michael Apple, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin, told Inside Higher Education that the Socratic method is increasingly unpopular on college campuses "because we are in a test-based education system." Students are no longer used to such a process-oriented way of learning, and are "increasingly impatient where the answer is not clear and when the professor is not giving it to them immediately," Apple told the website.