Standing Up to the Test

In "You Gotta BE the Book" Wilhelm wrote about a time that he stood up to the faculty and staff. They were talking about standardized testing- he decided to go on a total rant of why students cannot be fairly evaluated by these tests. He leaves off with the thought of why a majority of educators agree to still use standardized testing.

I personally think this is because teachers don't want to spend extra time to evaluate the students themselves. It is an easy way out- just give all of the students a test that they do not have to grade. Only teachers that are really invested in their students do not want to use them. We need to start rising up and get rid of these things! (see how easy it is to rant about testing)

He goes on to talk about teachers being researchers. Teachers learn from research done in the past, but they learn the most from their own classroom. "They are continually evaluating, interpreting, and making decisions..." Wilhelm shares his personal experiences of how teachers are constantly doing research... All students are different, year after year and we learn something from each of them. He shows that teachers must go beyond teaching for comprehension and these tests, and they gain skills as they do so.

Why can't we use these skills to evaluate our students' progress? We can clearly see that it is an unfair system. Teachers themselves have greater capability to evaluate progress than a sheet of bubbled in letters. If all teachers decided to invest their time and skills into their students, I feel that we could get rid of this system. This might result in greater improvement in all students.

Here's a LINK to a great read about standardized testing.