“The important effects of schools are located in the kinds of lives that children lead outside school and the kinds of satisfactions they pursue there. In research terms, the major dependent variables of schooling are not scores on standardized achievement tests, whether norm- or criterion-referenced; they are the kinds of ideas children are willing to explore on their own, the kinds of critical skills they are able to employ on tasks outside classrooms, and the strength of their curiosity in pursuing the issues they will inevitably encounter in the course of their lives. Indeed, a much better index for school achievement than standardized achievement test scores is the level and quality of the conversations children engage in away from their classrooms.”
Elliot Eisner
What Really Counts in Schools, 1991
