I was having trouble with this post. I simply couldn't think of what I wanted to write about. Then I started to ask myself, "What do I know about the US government?". Well I've learned about the sociodemographics of Congress, what a filibuster is, and how political polling works. But what do I know? I know all these things, because they're up in my brain. I studied them and was tested over them. But what do I have to comment about? What have I experienced as a part of this population? What do I really know?? Honestly not much. I kind of get how elections work, and I know that we have different people doing different jobs in DC. But what do I know about the government that has affected my daily life? Most of my life has been in the public school system. 65% of it. And if there was one thing that I remember wishing I could change, it was standardized tests.
The lovely George W. Bush had this to say,
"If you don't test, you have a system that just shuffles the kids through, and that's unacceptable. It's unacceptable to quit on a kid early and just say, 'Move through, and hope you learn.' What you've got to do is measure to determine where they are, and then you can compare districts and compare States. And as a result of strong accountability measures and good teachers and more funding, the results are positive."
Now if I am remembering correctly, it felt exactly the opposite. “"If you don't test, you have a system that just shuffles the kids through”... Sorry bud, I think you mean if you DO test.
“Hillary Rodham Clinton, JD, US Secretary of State, stated while US Senator (D-NY) during her address to the National Education Association (NEA) June-July 2007 Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly
“the test is becoming the curriculum, when it should be the other way around. And the curriculum is being narrowed….How much learning is exactly going on? Our children are getting good at filling in those little bubbles, but how much creativity is being left behind? How much passion for learning is being left behind? And what about those children who we know are bright and successful in the classroom but simply don't perform well on tests?.....They have tremendous talents, maybe musical or artistic talents. They're made to feel like failures because the curriculum doesn't reward what it is they are good at."
(YES! I agree with that statement so much.)
I do understand why politicians need to have this kind of control over our country’s education, but holy moly this is not the way. Christopher Paslay wrote this in this article in the Philadelphia Daily News in February of 2012,
"Standardized tests may be lucrative for educational publishers and useful for politicians who want to control school resources, but they seldom improve learning. No Child Left Behind has promoted empty lessons geared toward such tests. As a result, teacher spontaneity is compromised, leaving students uninspired."
I felt so much of this. The stress of those tests was horrible. It's only been two years since I was last drilled to have that information in my brain, and I can guarantee you that none of it has been useful (maybe a little math - but you get my point). I felt that it was all my teachers cared about, was what we got on those tests. But when you didn’t do well, you felt so stupid!
One day I will have children, and if we are still testing the life out of our kiddos, I will get to tell mine that I fought against this. I do not believe that standardized testing is a way to measure the quality of our teachers or students. I believe it can be degrading to students, and unrightfully closes schools due to poor test scores. We need to teach our future generations how they can fall in love with learning, not how to fear filling in a bubble incorrectly.
"Is the Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America? - Standardized Tests - ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. 14 June 2012. Web. 29 Apr. 2016.
