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While literacy is very important for humans to function on a daily basis, do we really need more tests in our schools?

These days, the concentration on testing in our schools has taken away from individual learning and teaching styles. Teachers are forced to teach to tests and students are forced to learn using the rules of the tests. This is not education at its finest. Another, or more vigorous test for reading will only defeat the purpose of education.

Children should learn on their own level and in their own way. Anyone can pass any test if someone walked them through it 180 days out of the year. Yet, in the end did they really learn anything? Chances are they did not. Chances are they were so bored with the repetitive teaching style that they tuned the teacher out long ago. And we wonder why our schools are failing to make the grade.

Testing is one way that we can use to measure competence, but this should not be used on a regular or repetitive basis. Some students panic when they take tests. Some students are frustrated or bored by the time they are finished and others don't really care and randomly fill in the little bubbles in retaliation. If any of the former is true, the results would not be very accurate.

Testing, testing and more testing has become the norm in today's education system. We are all so concerned about the test scores that we are not paying attention to the students. Teachers fear for their jobs if their students don't meet the required test scores. Students lose their enthusiasm to learn, and parents become frustrated and let down when their child is required to attend a "special" class to improve test scores.

Much of school funding is now based on test scores. If the school is not testing up to par they lose funding. How in the world does this help the students? They are failing so let's take away their money so they have less to work with? Yeah that's going to improve the quality of education that these students now recieve. Not.

Testing and more testing is not the answer here. We need to do more individual personal observation. Spend the money required to develop, print an distribute tests on more useful approaches such as more teachers, more assistants and more classroom materials. Students will benefit much more from this than they do from these tests and it will also help create more jobs along with fueling the economy.

Rather than spend countless hours, money and energy devising more tests, why don't we go back to the days when teachers actually cared about their students more than the fate of their careers, assessed them on a daily basis and on a more personal level by observation.

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