Kohn Evaluation

Alfie Kohn's piece "The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation" I believe is sound due to him accurately opposing his oppostions fallicies. He specifically describes fallacies following the myths with grade inflation. He gives information which he has gotten through actual facts and then follows this information with his own infromation in which he found himself. The SAT issue which has always been an issue with me comes up and this is where I found Kohn's piece most interesting. "Even if one believes that the SAT is a valid and valuable exam, however, the claim that scores are dropping is a poor basis for the assertion that grades are too high. First, it is difficult to argue that a standardized test taken in high school and grades for college course work are measuring the same thing. Second, changes in aggregate SAT scores mostly reflect the proportion of the eligible population that has chosen to take the test." Here he puts out that highschool SATs are not relevant to those of college grades. I do believe how you learned high school should reflect in college courses but I do not think they should be mixed. "Finally, they report that more states are adding high-school graduation tests and even standardized exams for admission to public universities. Yet that trend can be explained by political factors and offers no evidence of an objective decline in students' proficiency. For instance, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as "the nation's report card" on elementary and secondary schooling, have shown very little change over the past couple of decades, and most of the change that has occurred has been for the better." I also agree with this statement as well. The students test is supposively being improved yet they are seeing no changes. Being a college student this doesnt seem appealing and would discourage people from going to a public university. I believe Kohn stated facts and he backed it up with his own words and data. His argument is sound due to the fact he was able to pull out opposing fallacies and back them up with his own evidence.