A Future Stuck in the Pipeline{standardized testing}

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/05-0

Are the bad ideas dead yet? You know, the ones that have been hollowing out the country’s soul for the last 30 years.

In Atlanta, they just indicted 35 teachers, principals and administrators, including a former superintendent, for routinely altering their students’ standardized test results — and in all likelihood this massive fraud is an aberration only because the cheaters got caught.

Everything is at stake in these tests, so perhaps it’s dawning on us that fraud — by adults — is inevitable, but there’s a bigger issue here that continues to escape public outrage: The tests are stupid. They measure virtually nothing that matters, but monopolize the classroom politically. Teachers, under enormous pressure, are forced to teach to the tests rather than, you know, teach critical thinking or creative expression; and education is reduced to something rote, linear and boring.

Standardized testing is part of the era of backlash the Reagan presidency ushered in, which has stopped progressive thinking in its political tracks. As our social problems have grown more complex over the last three decades, we’ve met them with increasingly simplistic solutions. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of public education, which has become the plaything of political fanatics.