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Test givers and takers unite: Tests ARE good

Peter Meyer
1.20.2011

For all of you test faithful, so long cowering in the shadows of ?critical thinking skills? and free range blah-blah, ?you can come out now.

In a big boost for common sense ? ie. tests are a good way to encourage learning and to test its?staying power?? the NY Times is reporting on a new study that finds that ?taking a test is not just a passive mechanism for assessing how much people know,?? but ?actually helps people learn, and it works better than a number of other studying techniques.?

Thank God, the pendulum still swings.

?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow

Tags: New York

Peter Meyer is an adjunct fellow with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Meyer is also a former News Editor of Life magazine and the author of numerous nonfiction books, including the critically acclaimed The Yale Murder (Empire Books, 1982; Berkley Books, 1983) and Death of Innocence (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1985; Berkley Books, 1986). Over the course of his three-decade journalism career Meyer, who…

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