Taking the SAT, Graduating Middle School: What NPR has to say on the Subject

What is up with Americans? Are we that driven by the testing machine that we have to subject 13 and 14 year old children to an examination that they are both unprepared academically and developmentally to take? It seems to me that what NPR reports is a symptom of a far larger social ill--that of equating education with test performance rather than with the ability to think one's way to rational and reasoned conclusions. Writing as an educator, I want to argue that promoting a blind loyalty to test scores devalues the time honored value of education. John Dewey argued that one can tell a great deal about a society by the way they choose to educate their youth. Placing competitive pressure on young adolescents just at an age when acceptance is far more important that being number ONE is unfortunate.

Education must be invitational in the sense that teachers must help students do or practice specific content area disciplines. History teachers must invite students to be historians, biology teachers must invite their students to practice biology and so on. By inviting students into the discipline or content area, teachers provide students with the tools to think like historians, scientists, or mathematicians. But being test dependent undermines this worthy goal. Being test dependent demands (as opposed to invites) students memorize facts in isolation. When one becomes a member of a discourse community (through invitation) one realizes that the foundational facts, events, structures, or formulas are quite important to a deeper understanding of the subject and, so, are willingly learned and retained as opposed to memorizing a few facts that will be tested only to forget 90% of the learning within 24 hours of the time recall is required.

Enough already. Let's figure out a way to allow kids to be kids, to engage them in schooling thus making school a place where students want to be rather than have to be.

Below is a brief statement about the NPR report.

These days, more than 100,000 students are taking the SAT while they're still in middle school. Some are under increasing pressure to get ready for college, no matter how early. And some want to qualify for prestigious academic summer programs such as the one at Johns Hopkins University.

Taking the SAT, Graduating Middle School:

Zoundry

The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy A significant look at the development and purpose of the SAT. A powerful read.

The Testing Trap: How State Writing Assessments Control Learning (Language and Literacy Series (Teachers College Pr)) An analysis of all that is wrong with state testing instruments and programs.

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