We appreciate Rachel doing this interview with Equal Opportunities for Students! Her interview is a part of the Tell Your Story series.
You can find her interview here.
She made a very good point about the flawed nature of standardized testing in schools. Standardized testing brings a large number of issues to the classroom. First, the test itself takes away from valuable class time that otherwise would have been used to teach the students. Second, teacher evaluations are often times done, at least in part, by how students do on standardized tests. When teachers are being judged by a strict set of standards, the teachers tend not to take some of the creative liberties they would have otherwise taken, and instead favor strictly teaching the standards they know will be evaluated. These standards also change from year to year, meaning teachers, principals, and students often don’t know exactly how they will be evaluated until the test is already in front of them. Lastly, this data typically doesn’t get to principals, teachers, parents, or students until the school year has already ended; the data is no longer relevant at that point. Instead of giving teachers critical feedback about how students are understanding concepts in the class and allowing for changes, the feedback comes when that teacher will no longer be teaching those students. How would you improve this system, so that teachers can get a better grasp on how students are doing in their classroom? Could another system replace testing in part, if not entirely?