Everyone hates them, students and teachers alike. They are boring, they are frustrating, they are demanding of time... they ASK you to hate them. They happen every year in every school across the nation: state tests.
Damn those state tests!! Or wait... are they really so bad?
The standards provide a goal towards which teachers must work and a curriculum guide by which they can follow. Everyone seems to think that they have the answers for how and what to teach high school students today. Unfortunately, everyone has a different answer. So who gets to write the curriculum? Who gets to decide what goes into a "proper" high school education?? Although standardized state tests have largely been seen as a draw back and a hinderance, they are actually quite telling and useful for research in what works and what doesn't work in education.
I am a huge supporter of education reform. The system needs to change from the top all the way down to the bottom. I am frustrated that so many people are giving off-hand solutions that will inevitably solve the problems we face with education today: performance-based pay for teachers, give more money to the schools, bus kids between urban and suburban sites, etc. These may be short-term, even helpful solutions, but in isolation, these are not the answers.
So what is the answer? What will make our students better writers, speakers, citizens, thinkers, and voters? What exactly needs to change?? What will keep good teachers in and bad teachers out of the classrooms??? What about our curriculum and instruction needs improvement???? How do we do all of this?????
Accountability from the top down. From the national to the state to the district to the site, all the way down to teachers, and on down to students. Accountability. The reason things aren't changing is because the farther you go up the line, the less they know about what is really going on in there - the frightening place that administration dares not step into, the sacred ground of the educator, that property which is his or hers alone - the classroom... especially during instruction! The best way they've ever figured is through standardized tests, which only happens once a year. But why not keep teachers and students and principals, etc. accountable all year long? Keep the tests - it gives us a guide for what needs to be taught from year to year. Really, teachers should never be left alone!
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