Standardized testing is one of the necessary evils in our current educational system. I do agree that it needs to happen so that we have some means to compare schools and develop some level of accountability. But I also understand how misleading they can be. It is important to be aware of these positives and negatives.
I would love to see more specialization in our schools some day. There are certainly children who do not fit into the traditional mold and therefore are impossible to assess using standardized methods. Standardized testing only works well with students who fit well into the traditional mold of schooling. In these cases, standardized tests are an essential element to not only assessing student progress but also assessing the schools ability to educate children.
Assessing a schools ability to teach kids is not the same as an incentive based program that some politicians are pushing for today. I do not feel it is appropriate to base pay incentives for teachers or funding incentives for schools based on standardized test scores. I do not support that.
But as for testing. In our traditional outlook on education it is a necessary evil. If we developed a new system of educating that focused more on specialized education then I could see people arguing to abolish the current standardized testing system. However, I do not see that happening any time soon.
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