By Vicki Abeles and Jo Boaler

Opinion

Welcome to standardized testing season, when students nationwide are clearing their desks, sharpening their pencils and fighting feelings of anxiety to meet our schools’, states’, and federal government’s desire for a simple, quantifiable way to measure them. Is this really what education is about?

It shouldn’t be. Educators across America agree that high-stakes testing has taken the place of meaningful teaching and learning in our schools. They’re united in their conclusion that it’s a poor tool for assessing a child’s educational progress and needs. They agree that an over-reliance on standardized testing actively worsens the quality of American schooling. At best, they say, it leads to a narrowed, inflexible curriculum aimed at test prep and regurgitation. At worst, it erodes our students’ abilities to grow into lifelong, creative learners and inquisitive problem solvers.

But the perception that parents and the taxpaying public wantstandardized tests — that we in fact need them in order to hold our teachers and school boards accountable for our children’s educations — persists. And so standardized testing remains ascendant across American school districts. As our classrooms have been turned into test prep centers, important subjects that are not emphasized such as science, history and art have been significantly reduced in schools. In turn, students are becoming disengaged, stressed, checked out and — worst — dropouts.

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