The TRUTH about Standardized Tests!!!!
(image via wikimedia)
Even though the standardized testing season is weeks away, my kids are already complaining about it. They’re whining about how many tests there are this year. They’re moaning about how long they have to sit in one classroom and stay quiet. They’re griping about how stressful and boring the tests are.
I don’t blame my kids for dreading the tests. Testing wasn’t such a big deal when I was a kid. We took one test that I recall, but there was no build up to it, so nobody really seemed to care about it. Instead, we stressed over the semester exams that our teachers gave us.
Nobody (including teachers and principals) likes the current testing system, but the government insists that students take a bunch of tests anyway. I’m starting to wonder why. Why does the government insist that so much time is spent on standardized testing?
Maybe it’s about measuring student learning. Maybe it’s about improving education. Or maybe… it’s about something more nefarious.
Remember, I talk to myself when I write, and sometimes I go off topic.
Dysfunctional Literacy 
i am very anti-standardized test!
anti-standardized testism is perfectly acceptable.
Every teacher I know thinks that there’s too much emphasis on standardized testing, and that they have to spend way too much time on practice tests, test prep, etc.
Everybody I know in education agrees (or says that they agree), but the testing seems to get more intense and time consuming anyway.
It’s weird that it works that way.
I don’t think our standardized testing is quite as bad in Canada yet, but my kids are just at the beginning of their school journeys and it’s all still fun and games 😂 This could make a great SF story, though.
“This could make a great SF story, though.”-
There’s a part of me that thinks this dystopian SF future is already happening… and we just don’t know it yet.
All the best science/speculative fiction explores the dystopian elements of our own societies, I think. The “speculative” elements of books like 1984, or Oryx and Crake, or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are so impactful because they hit close to home. I know Margaret Atwood bases all of her SF elements in current R&D and simply explores the “what if” of those technologies being widely adapted.
I think we’re all feeling a little uneasy in the Information Age, which is maybe why dystopian fiction has surged in popularity. You’re right, the implications of data-data-data are scary because they’re already happening, and we’ve only see hints of the repercussions so far.