I was very happy to find that my last post actually garnered a response, especially one which allows me to continue bringing some of my post’s points into greater relief.
I last mentioned that President Obama has now come out in favor of extensive standardized testing, just as the last administration was, and in fact is in favor of toughening these standards. This rather scares me, considering that under the current systems, schools that under-perform — not relative to themselves or other schools but according to federally set thresholds — can be denied funding, thus further damaging the school’s chances.
There’s just one thing I disagree with in the response I received: the comment said that standardized testing “works, at least on the large scale. Standardized testing serves as an equalizer for students approaching higher education from vastly different educational backgrounds.” Actually, as data has lately begun to prove, the overemphasis on standardized testing that No Child Left Behind has created has increased educational inequality. Urban schools, already chronically under-funded, have fallen behind even further since the adoption of NCLB guidelines, and (unsurprisingly) the gap in achievement between white and minority students has widened in the same period of time.
That said, I agree with the reader’s second point — “our educational system has more pressing issues to deal with, most notably the poor retention rate (and quality, in many cases) of teachers.” Addressing burnout and other retention problems really should be a higher priority, and one would hope that between merit-pay programs and tenure reform, teacher quality would improve across the board. Even something as small as testing, given how it is reflected on teaching practices and standards, can have a much larger impact on education as a whole.
