Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Testing

An addendum
azstrummer — (archived)

While writing the above post I had in the back of my mind the whole debate right now about school accountability, No Child Left Behind, and this push for testing our youth into oblivion.

I'm reminded of two guys I knew in the Navy that I encountered at Nuclear Power School. One was the complete nerd that nobody could get along with. He'd pick his nose in class and eat it and yet his scores on the math and science exams were at the top of the charts. On the final day of school, since our training was all classified, we were told to destroy or secure our notes. This bozo took this literally, put his notebooks into a waste can, and set the whole mess on fire. Now the classrooms we were in were old wooden barracks and only quick thinking by an instructor that happened to walk in saved us all. Clearly nobody would've wanted to work besides this wacko and yet he ended up somewhere out turning knobs on a reactor control panel.

Another guy I knew struggled to get through the school, he eked by just above the passing grade because he just froze at tests and yet he truly understood all the concepts. I had the good fortune to go to the same boat he did and get to work with him. He turned out to be one of the most efficient and valuable workers on the sub and became a wonderful friend as well.

My wife is coming home lately with the horror stories of what this stress for accountability has done to our teachers. In the past they could look for those subtle talents in their students that didn't show up on the tests and decide there was true value and worth in these kids and move them through the system. Now these same diamonds in the rough are being left behind and the teachers are being relegated to simple custodians of policy.

Testing is merely a tool that must be used warily and never as a tool for punishment or pidgeon-holing. Let's hope we've learned this in the past decade or so and that our teachers will once again be allowed to teach and inspire.

Art

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