A recent editorial page of The News Herald fairly bristled with commentary on the state of education in our school district. A teacher targeted the superintendent and School Board for failing to provide teachers with wages and working conditions befitting professionals. Threatening teachers and administrators with loss of their jobs if test scores don't go up, as the superintendent and his minions have repeatedly done, generally does increase test scores, because it forces educators to teach to the test and turn schools into test prep centers. A look at the effects of current efforts on the lives of real children suggests otherwise.
Standardized tests serve to narrow the curriculum.
Power Writing is a commercial, artificial, rigid, and formulaic approach to producing writing that serves no purpose in the real world. Instead of immersing students in rich text and providing them with opportunities to write in many genres, on topics that matter to them, for purposes and audiences of their own choosing, educators drill students in one narrow mode. I've also come to see standardized testing as an intellectual freedom issue. When teachers are forced to teach to the tests, classroom communities are deprived of the opportunity to ask their own questions, pursue their own projects, dig deeper into topics that interest them, rattle cages, tilt at windmills, question authority, rock boats, challenge oppression, create art, and all the other things that make us fully and freely human. Standardized test scores are most often used to rank and sort children, not to improve the quality of their lives or their learning.