Are Standardized Tests Hurting America?

It has been an interesting year for me in my current teaching position. I have been given a second and third grade bridge class. When I first heard of the news I did not feel like it would be such a challenge. I thought I would do what I always do in any classroom. I would differentiate and meet the students needs where they were. I would bring up the lower ones and I would challenge the higher ones. I had the highest TAKS scores in the school the previous year and I thought my teaching methods were successful.

As the year progressed my third graders did not do well on the new Criteria Based Assessments. These are tests that were made by teachers and are quite a bit more difficult than the acutal TAKS test or the benchmarks we have taken previously. During one of the meetings with pricipals I was told that I could no longer teach using the methods I used last year. I was more than upset. I was told I could only use the Fort Worth ISD curriculum frameworks and no outside curriculum.

It was then that I truely realized how much these standardized tests were killing our school systems. I was the teacher. I was the one in the classroom with these kids every day. I was the one that knew where they were and what they needed yet I was now being told how to teach them. What has happened in the schools reminds me of a police state. Teachers are being treated like the children we teach. We are being micromanaged and told to teach to a test that is not well rounded. These tests do not teach our children HOW to think on their own. These tests do not help them use their creativity. We are going to lose our creative edge in the world if we don't start teaching our children in a different way.

In an article entitled "Standardized Testing Hurting U.S. Education" by Andy Henion helps make my point. He states, “Most importantly, we need to instill confidence – restore confidence – in our teachers and in our schools, because right now the accountability rhetoric in essence is telling us we don’t trust our educators – that they are not good enough, they are lazy, and that’s not the case.”

He also states, “Right now we seem to be stuck with the idea of standards as the panacea to fix all of America’s education problems,” said Zhao, University Distinguished Professor of education. “I don’t deny that the U.S. education system has problems, but I don’t feel the problems can be solved by standards and high-stakes testing. Rather, standards and high-stakes testing run the risk of ruining the advantages and great tradition of the system.”

I could not agree with him more! Keep reading my blog to learn new ways to teach without using the standardized testing system.

Article site: www.news.msu.edu/story/6755