Assignment

Review of online articles relative to standardized testing and its impact upon educational goals for my students, my teaching, and my classroom, as well as the global impact this will have on our community of learners as a whole.

My review of the article "Standardized testing hurting U.S. education, new book contends" by Andy Henion, focuses primarily on Young Zhao's impressions of the "//flawed policy that threatens to undermine the nation’s strengths of creativity and innovation".// Zhao is a professor from Michigan State University and not only reflects upon his educational experience but that of his own son as he illustrates some of the individual and community effects of high stakes testing.

As I read through this article I was drawn to the connection between Zhao's references of undermining creativity and innovation, the very skills that the world is demanding of our students and the very skills that adults in our current society are required to utilize every day in order to survive in their own workplace. I found Zhao's refernce to is own sons sense of failure when he did not achieve at the level of his expectation on standardized tests, and ultimately ended up attending a private school. The current movement in our government seems to be a push to privatize education, make our public schools look bad so that vouchers, charter schools that don't receive government funds and don't have to educate every child can be successful.

I am not knocking charter schools in any way as I think that they are an excellent opportunity to offer a focus and/or thematic approach to students that have a particular interest or skill that they wish to devote their attention to and charter/private schools are something that my husband and I are in fact considering for our own child. My quandry is with the approach that our legislators take on pitting public and private schools against each other when what we should be doing is working cooperatively to build a better, stronger community of learners that will lead us into a successful future for all. Private schools, with the more recent development of charter schools, have been around for decades as another choice for students and a different approach to education. I believe that we should be looking at the models that many of our charter schools are using as a resource for improving the creative and explorative techniques that we can utilize to improve our current classroom models. Students should have choices but if we are going to measure and compare them we should be comparing apples to apples, not apples to tomatoes (both of these being fruits).

I believe that one of the ways that we may better be able to accomplish the goal of authentic assessment of our students is by creating a complete picture of our students and our schools with standardized testing being one aspect, but not the only measurement tool. Zhao mentions rewarding schools "//for offering a diverse set of opportunities// ", which I believe should be one of the important markers that is in our measurement. Experiential and project based learning assessments are certainly not as easy to produce, grade, or fit into the nice neat puzzle that our nation's leaders like to see. But the fact is, the FDA would not release the performance and use of a new drug if it had not been tasted in every way, shape, form, and setting before administering it to our citizens. Therefore, why are we as a nation submitting the results of one method of testing, which has not been tested, proven, or retested for validity and accuracy but rather rolled out in an unfair playing field with the expectations that it will help our students perform effectively? I believe that we have yet to see the full outcomes of this new movement on the children that we teach and on education in this country in general. The impact will be greater than believe is predicted.

Additional Notation based upon my commute in this morning: Interesting NPR program on the effects on high NCLB. It's worth giving this a listen to hear the perspectives of those "in the trenches"

"Annapolis HIgh School: a work in progress"

I've added an NPR link from yesterday as well that I found interesting coming from a school who has just been forced to lay off half of their teachers and begin the rebuilding process.

"The ABC's Of Saving A Failing School"