Standardized Testing: A Principal's Perspective

In the wake of No Child Left Behind, the Common Core, and Race to the Top, standardized testing has been a plague on schools, and education reform is needed now more than ever before. An article in the Washington Post shows that the effects of federal government's overreach into the education system has severely stunted the states from creating challenging standards for education and has taken the opportunity of quality education from students across America. Because of the bribery from No Child Left Behind and Obama's Race to the Top initiative, schools are forced to conform to the federal government's standards of education, which in my mind are blindly constructed. As I have said in my previous posts, the federal government is too far from direct contact with the students, and their implementing of standards for students is completely absurd. 

 Principal Carol Burris oh South Side High School in New York has seen the effects of the government's overreach into school first-hand. There, test-based requirements for graduation are having the opposite effect on students; instead of pushing them to succeed, they are falling behind. The "graduation rate gap" there has expanded and the percentage of graduating ELL students is a measly 31 percent. These special education students are drilled to pass a test rather than given an education in which they are immersed in the knowledge and attention that they need. Standardized testing has deprived these students of reaching their full potential.

Education is not a platform for politicians to win elections. Education is a basic need and right to every child in America. If the federal government keeps stretching their boundaries into our schools, then we better stock up on wood-barrel #2 pencils.