OK. Obama/Duncan/Gates School "Reform" Model: The results Are IN !!! Today's NYT: P. A1

[BrotherIvan]

40. There are so many answers and I wish I could go into them all now.

I taught for a few years and grew up surrounded by neighbors who were all teachers as well as a mother who taught elementary for a forty years. All that "teacher talk" has sunk in, so I have seen things change from the late seventies to now.

Standardized testing would be akin to a scientist using a ruler to test the temperature. Standardized testing tests nothing more than the ability of the student to take the test. The kind of multiple choice, fill in the bubble testing is the LOWEST form of knowledge one would hope a student could achieve. It has no correlation to real-world skills or knowledge and is creating a generation of students who are incapable of any complex thought processes whatsoever.

The problem with teaching to the test is that it has completely taken over all classroom time, so that the school year is quite literally scheduled around testing, and every single form of actual teaching has suffered. I taught Language Arts (what used to be called English) to high school Juniors and Seniors in a very low-income continuation high school. I had created lesson plans around teaching reading and writing, since most of my students could do neither competently. But I was told by the administration that I had to teach to the test. No time for essay writing, no time for reading *books* for Christ's sake! And though I tried to argue that for many of my students--and this is no exaggeration--that this may be the one opportunity in their lives to read an entire short novel (high school and college years are the time when a person shapes his or her views of the world, and I wanted to use the humanizing power of writing to expose my students to new ideas) the answer was, "Nope: teach to the test."

Every single teacher who has ever taught in a classroom will tell you what a travesty standardized testing is. And what all those who support it should see is that it not only does not help measure student learning or achievement in any way, it absolutely hinders that outcome. Education and learning is NOT business and should not be run like one. Testing is a race to the bottom while the overlords milk it for every penny that it's worth. NCLB was about Bush's buddies making $$, and NOTHING to do with education.