I would have posted this as a “reply,” but this page is poorly written (html code) and if a post is indented, the reply link doesn’t work. That being said, I would also love to reply to some of the people posting extraordinarily poorly-written posts and claiming to be teachers or to be standing up for teachers.

Jesse posts: “Students and teacher need to freedom to teach and learn marketable and real world skill, learning how to pass a test or guess the answer is c is not useful, in addition if you need a multiple choice government written test to identify you students strengths and weaknesses you are an unengaged teacher that is out of touch with your students.” Cannot seem to distinguish between plural and singular nouns, refers to a person as “that,” AND has written a TRIPLE run-on. Please, stop. Just stop! You are NOT doing education any favors!

I worry about the people who are designing the “need to know” items. I suggest they are no better able to predict the future than we could 30 years ago.

Thirty years ago, who conceived of the technology we have today? Who could have predicted the needed skills for today, etc.?

In addition, some test makers did not realize that their answer keys were wrong, in a few instances. Since teachers were not to know the questions or answers they went uncorrected for several rounds of testing. Hmmmmm…

Our saving grace was that all high schools did not teach/stress the same things. Yes, most had the same minimal standards, as the world changed, we had some (but not all) adults prepared to take advantage of the changes and move our society forward. But, at least we had some prepared.

Important? Why did not the countries with national curricula lead the development of our society the way as the U. S. has?

We used to talk about the different learning styles and formats; today, we talk about the test score. I’m not sure what the score means (other than the number a student got counted correct.)

I am sure there are tremendous gaps in the knowledge being tested. Example: The first round of goals, testing points, whatever the name was, did not include weather in high school for students in Nebraska. For those that don’t know it, Nebraska is part of tornado alley. We also have blizzards, drought, etc. So, we began to dump weather for more relevant material (that is, items on the test.)

The English people are already saying they can’t meet their test items, so the other courses need to pick up their slack. Wonder if they are interested in picking up our slack? It is clear that the test makers for the different subject areas are not, effectively, talking to each other. Or, they think that the teachers can magically “do it all”. We can’t!

We have states that are already backing away from evolution in biology, even though it is the backbone of biology. Global climate change still has some states and state boards of education sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “la-la-la…”.

What makes the experts think that all students should be able to analyze a sonnet or the deep meaning of “Catcher in the Rye”? Perhaps there are more important communication skills needed by all students. For some, these skills would be nice. For all?

Would we like a national “minimum competency” test? Not a bad idea. It might be for a student to read at the 10th grade level, be able to do first year algebra, explain the role of the United State Supreme Court, etc. They could then tell us the percentage of students meeting the minimum competency. That might be useful and valid.

Perhaps a true minimum competency test given, with out modifications or alterations, might actually tell us something. Otherwise, this is all a game. A game that will cost billions of dollars, over time, and will leave an educational system chasing numbers without meaning. It will leave millions of students in our society ill prepared for the future. It will distract our society from the real and necessary improvement we so desperately need.