Exams

==Background==
==Insights==
==Blogs==
=== As If Kids In Pennsylvania ===
... don't have to take enough mind-numbing standardized tests, the geniuses at the state Board of Education have started crafting a battery of tests in math, English, science and social studies that kids will have to pass if they want to escape from the exercise in ritualized humiliation otherwise known as high school.
A board panel has recommended that students take "graduation competency exams," in addition to the dread Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests that the state already mandates. Students would have to pass one set of tests in order to graduate, the Associated Press reports this morning.
"This is a significant change in the way we do business, and so we want to make sure that we're doing it in a responsible way," board Chairman Karl Girton said.
Twenty-five states either have or are introducing mandatory high school exit exams, according to the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C.
We heard a report on NPR about this movement on the way into the office this morning, and listened with some amusement as words like "accountability" and "competency," were bandied about.
Nowhere in the story did we hear mention of words like "critical thinking," and "independent thought," or even "love of learning."
Presumably, school administrators are more interested in crafting a generation of unthinking automatons who can bark on command and regurgitate rote facts than they are in sending them out into the world with the tools to actually contribute to our ailing democracy.
: from September 2007
category:education