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> respond). Testing is a useful way to allocate scarce resources in > universities, colleges and technical schools. It's also a useful way to > generate data that can be used by the individual and the institution. That's certainly the conventional argument and one which the general public supports. But what concerns me about this argument - and always has concerned me - is too much attention is paid to the tests themselves (their rightness of fit, contextual authenticity, validity for any given group) and not enough to the values and assumptions that drive the assessment/testing machine. And make no mistake - it is a machine and a very expensive one. I'm with Gardner, among others: I would love to see all the money devoted to fine-tuning the machine (research, administration, among other related activities) spent on teaching/learning with students. And no - I won't accept the argument that we need megadollars spent on researching assessment in order to adequately inform our teaching. I have a child with special needs, and I have worked extensively with children such as him. I can tell you that the major source of salient and relevant information about how to help him or others like him comes NOT from assessment tools -- regardless of their sensitivity (to culture, ability, and so on) -- but what I learn by spending time working in context, in realistic (and useful and meaningful) learning activities. The money we devote to large scale assessment is money that supports one of our greatest educational myths: that we can, in almost all cases, find some instrument that allows us to escape time with predictions. Lorri ********************************************************************** Lorri Neilsen Associate Professor Mount Saint Vincent University 166 Bedford Highway Halifax, Nova Scotia CANADA B3M 2J6 Ph (902) 457-6156 (voicemail)/FAX (902) 457-4911 Email: [log in to unmask] **********************************************************************