Stop the Madness

Doesn’t anybody have the courage to challenge this slavish devotion to standardized testing (mostly bubble tests, by the way)? Students in New York City finished taking their ‘end of the year’ state test in mid-May, but school itself doesn’t get out until the end of June. For kids (and for the policy types in their comfortable offices), the tests are everything. Teachers, of course, have to hold their students’ interest for another six weeks or so.

As usual, John Merrow hits it right on the head.  Tests on top of tests on top of tests.  If we aren't testing basic skills, we're testing for adequately yearly progress.  And if we're not doing that, we're testing for our own specific content areas (such as for To Kill a Mockingbird or Fahrenheit 451).  Now we are going to test to gauge teacher effectiveness!