The Next Step

Standardized tests have gotten completely out of control, and it’s high time something was done about it.

1. They don’t do what they are intended to do.
Try as they might, the board of education (at least here in Massachusetts) still cannot come up with a test to determine which child is creative and thoughtful, and which one just had parents with the money to drop on a nice prep course.

2. They hurt kids.
Don’t take this the wrong way. I am all for straight talk in education, even if it means telling a kid that he just isn’t smart enough for X. However, the vast majority of kids know exactly where they stand on the intellectual ladder and don’t need some very official-looking number from a statewide test rubbing it in their faces.

3. They hurt taxpayers.
I would go as far to say that the only group benefiting from MCAS (or any standardized test) is the test preparation industry. You can be sure that “big education” folks are all up in your government selling them books and supplies, many that even have the test’s name on the cover. Your tax dollars pay both for the people who create the test, and for the books and courses to help your kids pass the test. This is, of course, in addition to regular school, which is increasingly just an extended test prep course.

4. Going “by the numbers” doesn’t work in education.
It seems to me that the educational system has tried to learn something from business, and expects graduation rates to go up every year. This would be fine, except for the fact that children aren’t getting much smarter. Teachers are expected to maintain a certain pass rate (or even improve it), and therefore push through some kids who should probably fail. I believe that this was a big part of the motivation behind standardized testing. However, now instead of just being able to push the kids through, the teachers legitimately have to spend all their time repeating the same points until the dumbest kids in the class finally get it, holding the smarter ones back. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think it’s right to just “push kids through,” but we are running into the collision of several major issues here.

5. Teachers are evaluated based on student performance.
This is a tough issue for me. On one hand, you can’t argue with results. There are some teachers who are just really really good. Certainly, these teachers should be rewarded. However, for a teacher to know that his performance is being judged by how his students do on a single test only encourages him to ignore the ones who will pass it easily, and focus all the attention on the ones who won’t. Even outside of the standardized testing world, it prevents teachers from acting honestly all the time, even if only subconsciously in some cases.

6. You absolutely have to trust your teachers.
What it all comes down to is that you need your teachers to be trustworthy individuals and, more importantly, you need to actually trust them. If you’ve hired someone who isn’t doing his job well, you will find out, one way or another. If you, as a parent, think that teachers aren’t doing a good job, well maybe you should be a teacher. And if you are, good for you. Keep fighting the good fight.

What’s the matter, winter? You getting soft in your old age? In case you didn’t notice, it was fifty-something degrees out today. You might want to look into that.

Got a lot going on. First off, I have finally admitted defeat at the hands of the evil cable companies and have gotten myself some real web hosting. Look for napalmer.com to appear in the near future, if they’ve gotten the DNS set up correctly. If that goes smoothly, we may even see artisene.com return.

I’ve been putting some time into a game lately, kind of an ambitious project (for me, at least). Lauren and Nora are helping out with the art since I’ve never been much for the art thing. Once I have the site up and running, you’ll find more details there.