I was reading Larry Ferlazzo’s post on standardized testing and I thought I’d share it here. He asked his students to let him know their impressions of the test and I must say their feedback is very telling. We all know that one size fits all testing is not an effective way to measure what our students are learning just as we know that standardized tests do not show the incredible work our students are doing. No, standardized tests are at best a snapshot of what our students can recall of what they’ve learned at some point in their lives (I say lives because school isn’t the only place where we learn). Knowing what we know about standardized tests it’s a shame that our leaders rely so heavily on them to determine how our schools are doing and how much our students are learning. Testing hasn’t caught up with 21st Century Learning but we are using it to measure what our students are doing in their classes anyway. Here’s Mr. Ferlazzo’s post. I think his students did a great job of describing how well they believe state tests measure what they know and what they think would be a better measure.
Oh and we’re not alone in this. Read this Washington Post article about teachers in England who are outright refusing to administer their versions of state tests!
Mr. Gonzalez
