By Amanda Tennant, staff writer
Education is one of the most important pillars of our society, not only because it establishes the next generation of citizens, but also because it influences the future of this nation and how this generation may view the world.
So, when the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law by Congress in 2002, many believed that this push for standardized testing would revolutionize the entire education system and thus improve American schools.
However, 13 years later, standardized testing has shown to not only accomplish the very opposite of its original goal of improving American schools, but has also deprived students of everything it means to receive an education and to learn.
An education can be defined in many ways. However, the most authentic is when Albert Einstein once said, “education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.”
Yet, the very essence of standardized testing does not promote this. It does not encourage a mind to think or ask questions. It instead crams it into a confining box and constricts it into viewing the world from a restricted, contracting viewpoint.
A student is first exposed to standardized testing in elementary school. At that age, a child is overflowing with creative potential. He or she also has a longing to be engaged in both the classroom and on the playground. When a standardized test finally asserts itself onto a child’s desk, it demands that his or her attention surrender to a set of multiple choice questions. This intimidation and stress forces them to abandon any sense of creativity and curiosity for the world in order to persist in school. As a result, his or her mind no longer asks about why or how something came to be, but instead only cares about the test answer.
However, this is not the only way standardized testing contradicts what an education is.
From the earliest stages of childhood, parents inspire their children to persevere until they reach their goals.
Somehow, however, this line of thinking exists everywhere except in a classroom, according to standardized testing. Once a student enters, he or she is subjected to a set of teaching standards and statistics that simply pushes students along and doesn’t stop for anything. As long as students “pass” and “get a good enough grade,” it doesn’t matter if they fully understand the concepts. As long as that student is on track in order to take those standardized tests, who cares that there is now a gaping hole in that child’s knowledge and information that may or may not af- fect his or her educational performance in the future.
Thus that student is now a victim of the one-size- fits-all, conveyer belt education where individuality and strengths are entirely ignored.
How did our education system become like this? Why does curiosity and creativity have to take a backseat to tests and statistics? Why can’t we acknowledge each student’s individual strengths and weaknesses? Why can’t we give more assistance to a student struggling to grasp a concept if they really want to learn it? And for what? A number in a grade book? For the outward appearance of a “good school”?
Because of this thinking, the education system had become detached and disconnected. The meaning of books and science and history have become trampled under superficial exams. A school’s sole purpose is now about getting a certain number of questions right on a paper that can be created in an instant yet forgotten in a lifetime.
But, all because a student gets a “perfect!” test score and a 100 percent on Infinite Campus, it didn’t make that student a master at the subject. It doesn’t make that student understand the world better. It doesn’t make that student a better person. It just makes that student fit the ideal numerical value that standards deem they should be at. Ironically, that student probably won’t even remember half of the information they “learned” and “mastered” at this point in time about 20 years from now, despite being a star pupil, according to standardized testing.
I am not a test score. The students at Indian Trail are not test scores. We are all human beings trying to grow into the world around us. We are all people with different abilities and interests. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. And we will not stand to have a number or percentile judge our unique growth and abilities.
Yes, some insist that schools need testing in order to evaluate how students are responding to a concept. But, students don’t need to be tested so much that all of the creativity and life that is associated with an education is erased.
How about instead of testing students to see if they learned something, we should instead ask them to use what they learned and connect it to themselves and the world around them. Instead of drilling who was the first president, we should ask what the first president means to them and how he shaped the country. Instead of pounding out math tests, we should teach and show how math affects our lives and the world around us. If we did that, maybe students would be excited to go to school again. Then at school, their educational passions would be respected.
An education is supposed to be explored, not determined. So, let us stop using standardized testing to define growth and return to an educational system that inspires students.