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Breathe in slowly. Count backwards from 20. As you breathe in the anesthetic, and before you lose consciousness, ask yourself this about the person who's about to cut into your body:

Would you rather your surgeon be:

A) a great standardized test-taker
B) experienced in performing surgeries
C) a great regurgitator of facts

Or imagine this scenario: You've just been accused of a crime you didn't commit. Who do you want defending you? Would it be:

A) the highest scorer on standardized tests
B) an experienced trial lawyer
C) well-versed in test-taking strategies

The vast majority of us would of course choose "B," because when it's crunchtime, we want a person helping us who actually does the job we need in real life and not just as an abstract scenario on a test. Flying in the face of this common sense and common desire, however, we as a society instead have been duped into supporting more and more standardized testing in a misguided bid for educational accountability. There are many ways to criticize the current testing mania, (consider that some districts give pencil and paper tests to pre-kindergarteners, according to Early Education & Development Journal), but for the sake of this argument, let's focus on just the topic of experience when it comes to competence.

We expect that the professionals in our lives have real-world experience in performing their job duties. I don't know about you, but I've never called a plumber who advertised his test scores, only one whom I knew to be competent by virtue of the completed work. Likewise with my beautician. I know she had to pass a test to get her license, but I know she spent a lot more time actually doing hair to learn how to dye all of my gray out so convincingly. No one has ever asked me how high her scores were; they just want her number because she's so good at color. I defy you to find a professional that you rely on who you care about their test scores. Other countries, most notably Norway (which has no standardized testing) do not test their students to the extent that we do.

So, why do we do it? Why do we insist that accountability be nothing more than a scale score? From where I stand, which not coincidentally is inside a "failing school" (based on No Child Left Behind metrics) in a Texas inner-city, I believe we have bought into a Ford factory model of education where we believe we can standardize children just like we standardize parts for a car. Input education on one end, graduate an "educated" student at the other

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