Small Things Count

President Obama wants to revamp “No Child Left Behind” in part by limiting time spent on standardized testing.  As a teacher who spent untold hours administering those tests, I cry “Hallelujah!”

As new fads and regulations fall upon classrooms, teachers have more and more special-interest slants to add to their curriculum.  Not that most of them aren’t important.  In fact, they often pull in segments of our population that have been ignored or underrepresented in what kids are learning.  But they take time to teach.  The standardized tests steal time from the actual teaching/learning process.

The value of the tests lies in cold, hard numbers that bureaucrats can see on paper, report to the world, and use for decision-making.

However, I question that value.  I remember my students asking, “Will this count on our grade?”  Because the answer was “No,” a portion of the kids didn’t bother trying.  Another portion included those who simply were not good at taking objective tests or who, as immigrants, handled spoken English fine but written English, not so much.  Or they had trouble understanding because their growing-up experiences didn’t match those described on the test. In other words, a significant number of kids had learned a lot more than their standardized test results showed.  Is that valuable data?

Go for it, Prez.  Let’s allow time for teachers to teach and kids to learn.