State and federal testing mandates are a sure fire way to remove all passion for learning from students and rob teachers of the joy of teaching. I’ve never supported any testing that did not lead to helping students achieve curriculum standards and drive instruction. Exceedingly a big majority of standardized tests do nothing more than attempt to measure the school or the teacher; the child is simply the conduit to get to that “data.”
Case in point: my ten-year-old referred to today as “the worst day of my life.”
Why?
“All this testing,” she said on the brink of tears.
Our children are not widgets produced in a factory and measuring them as such to see if the “factory” is producing enough good “widgets” has never worked to achieve better education - just better test takers (maybe).
We have to do better.
