Standardized Testing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as a go-to reference in HN discussions about education and teaching to the test.
What it is
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on standardized testing in American schools. It covers how tests drive school funding, the achievement gap, and the testing industry around companies like Pearson.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites specialist · 2017-01 · on “When Finnish Teachers Work in America's Public Schools”
What portions of that link are relevant? All I see is a link dump. "Signaling"? As in virtue signaling? Is that your site? I approve of lesswrong, Brookings Institute, the Atlantic... And reviewing your comment history, I'm going to gamble on the hope that you're persuadable. You kinda "sound" like a libertarian, so you might enjoy this publication from criticalthinking.org: [LINK] First hit when I google "fads in education". Result! The intro is better than I could have said it: "The history of education is also the history of educational panaceas, the comings and goings of quick fixes for deep-seated educational problems. This old problem is dramatically on the increase. The result is inte
Cites CaptArmchair · 2020-06 · on “Ideas That Changed My Life”
Well, I read the article. It's not that great. Why? Because it's a mix 'n match of quotes, bits and pieces and observations cobbled together to support the thesis that digital technology will disrupt how information - and therefore our thinking about the world - is controlled. It's not that he's factually wrong about what he's saying. Rather, it's that the article lacks any references to a foundational understanding of historical dynamics and current affairs regarding economics, politics or economics. Everything he discusses has a historical context steeped in competing ideological, economical and political theories that have shaped the world since World War 1. And yet, he makes no mention t
Cites fao_ · 2025-12 · on “UK accounting body to halt remote exams amid AI cheating”
> It's already easy enough to just throw the test material into the LLM and get a bunch of flash cards on relevant content and memorize that LLM summarisation is broken, so I wouldn't expect them to get very far with this (see this comment on lobste.rs: [LINK] ) Also, memorizing flashcards is actually, to some point, learning the material. There's a reason why Anki is popular for students. Ultimately, however, this comes down to the 20th+21st century problem of "students learning only for the test", which we can see has critical problems that are well-known: [LINK] [this video]