Tests Come and Go!

There are some things that remain constant in public education. The classroom, notwithstanding some internet courses, will continue to be populated by teachers. Students endure and they will be in our hallways for many years to come. And, for the most part, young 5 year olds, 7 year olds and teenagers come into the classroom with much the same background as those who attended schools in years past.

Yes, we'll probably even keep right on having standardized testing. We'll certainly continue to see teachers using various assessment tools in their classrooms.

But back to standardized testing for a moment. What I have noticed in a merry go round of sorts in Illinois with standardized testing. It is constantly changing. We have Prairie States, ISAT's, PARC's and more. They test students in a variety of areas; for intelligence, growth and more. Okay, these are important.

But my view of things is that they don't have much of a real bearing on significant learning and the probability that students will someday be successful. Put another way (took me awhile to say it), you really can't quantify everything about teaching and learning. It just isn't that simple. Therein lies part of the fallacy of almost any standardized test.

Dick