Are Alfie Kohn’s “stupid questions” really stupid of just inconvenient?

Lovers of irony should check out Yes, there are stupid questions  from the Washington Post yesterday. In the article, well known anti-homework crusader Alfie Kohn comes out hitting against standardized testing. Kohn takes exception to a particular question from a high school math test and boldly states that:

"No newspaper, no politician, no parent or school administrator should ever assume that a test score is a valid and meaningful indicator without looking carefully at the questions on that test to ascertain that they’re designed to measure something of importance and do so effectively.”

Irony #1 is that the math question Kohn ridicules is a perfectly valid and effective one, testing whether the students understand basic algebraic notation, an important skill used widely in mathematics, the sciences, engineering and economics. Its something the kids should have studied, should have learned and should be able to answer.

The more beautiful irony is seeing the progression from being ‘anti-homework’ to being ‘anti-testing’. Indeed, it is inconvenient to be asked questions about pesky things like ‘algebraic notation’ or ‘facts’ – especially when one hasn’t been doing his homework.