How Did We Ever Manage?

Yes, I'm quite serious about the title of this blog. Isn't it amazing that we were able to teach children and keep the country afoot for all these decades without state testing?! How on earth were we able to do it? It really must have been a stroke of luck that we made such progress, for millions of citizens, without state exams.

I'll tell you how we managed. Teachers and schools managed because they knew how to educate children, plain and simple. Whether 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or 20 years ago educators did what we know, right now, works in the classroom today.

Here's what works (in no special order since they are equally important): setting high standards for students and teachers to strive for and meet, teaching of the highest quality, providing a well rounded curriculum (forget cores somehow being more important then electives), and developing students to their fullest potential. That doesn't mean we prepare them for college or work per say. It means we prepare them for the challenges they face, college and work, perhaps, those being two possible challenges.

It worked then and it will work today.

I am tired of test scores somehow being equated to a teacher and/or child's success or failure. The day a test score, essentially in an of itself, dictates such success or failure is more than a sad day.

It's time we stopped looking for a 'fix' or simple explanation of how schools (educators and students) perform. It's way more complicated than that...it always has been. The factors I discussed above are far more critical in determining successes than test scores. Quit being told differently!

How did we ever manage? Well, quite well thank you!

Thanks,
Dick