by Francy Bozarth

Created on: May 08, 2007

What, exactly, is the purpose of all this standardized testing our schools are executing? It seems to me that the "No Child Left Behind" Act, has really been the "Every Child Left Behind" Act.

More to the point, what happened to real, in-depth learning?

Today's schools are more environments stressed about teaching to the tests we now require them to pass, than they are about truly educating our up and coming adults. Yup, let's stress our children out, that'll teach them to love learning.

The really sad thing is, all educators know better than to do this. Testing has it's place - for example, placement tests, which help to appropriately gear educational content for students. Tests for the purpose of measuring growth is entirely appropriate - when used individually, to measure individual growth.

According to Education Week, September 2000, "Norm-referenced tests were never intended to measure the quality of learning or teaching."

Which brings up the question, why then, are we using norm-referenced tests to measure the quality of learning and teaching?

Testing as it is currently utilized is superficial at best. The truly sad part is that more and more reports are showing up indicating that schools are dropping subjects that are not being tested. Topics like, oh science.....nothing important. Of course, then we hear reports on how our country is lagging behind in areas such as science and engineering.

There is not an educator out there worth their salt who likes what is going on in our schools. You don't even have to ask them to figure this out. Just observe these public educators in action. The vast majority are stressed to the brink about getting these children to pass the tests, because their own job may be on the line. The school's status is going to be on the line.

Well, that's all good and fine, but wasn't our purpose in providing education to better our children academically? Where is the academic benefit in focusing so heavily upon test taking? Most tests require only the use of lower level thinking skills. Where do higher level thinking skills, the skills we need most to survive in the world come in? You know.....analytic skills, being able to make an informed opinion or judgement......those skills.

In allowing our schools to be so heavily focused upon standardized testing, our children, and ultimately ourselves lose big time. Come to think of it, not only are we leaving every child behind, we are leaving our entire society behind when we don't encourage thinking, and spend too much time on shallow, automaton-like education.

Our best thinkers have not been the best drone-conformists on the planet. It would seem that what we need to encourage is a good strong core knowledge, and a lot of question asking. Test to see where we need to begin building that core knowledge, to see where we are leaving gaps perhaps. But really, let's not test just to make ourselves feel like we are 'doing something' about education in this country.

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