Nice job articulating this important issue. I am reminded of the old saying that putting more lipstick on the pig does not make it prettier. A radical redesign is needed in which technology not only is used but used to the extent that its use is transparent. I still remember my senior year at the Academy when I got to put away my slide rule and use a calculator. That was over 30 years ago. Now we are no longer surprised by the use of calculators, the same should become true with a 1:1 initiative, but I hope we do not have to wait as long!

The second main reason to have standardized tests, I think, is to assess how individual students and individual teachers are doing. Again, the biggest problem with this is that there are SO MANY THINGS our schools have always taught and need to continue teaching which cannot be easily measured on a standardized assessment. Donald Graves notes that “Testing Is Not Teaching and he is right. Teaching and learning are SO much more than testing. I agree with Dr. David Berliner of ASU who contends that high stakes accountability systems inherently corrupt the teaching profession. These provide a distorted view of what should be a well rounded learning environment emphasizing BOTH things which can be readily tested at a knowledge and comprehension level on a multiple choice examination, AND many of the less tangible skills, abilities, and knowledge domains which cannot.

The point is NOT that we should or can abandon assessment. The point is we must change our focus in assessment, as you say to recognize the differentiated needs of learners. This is where I see web 2.0 tools providing such a great array of options for us. I am going to address this in a keynote on May 15th in Richardson, Texas, at ESC10, and I’ll flesh out more of my ideas there. Basically, as I have heard Dr. Chris Dede of Harvard say, web 2.0 tools can and should be used to collect a wide variety of “data points” about student performance and achievement throughout the year. This electronic portfolio of student work can then be used as a meaningful lens to examine what the student has DONE and CAN DO with respect to knowledge, information, ideas, collaboration, digital literacies, etc.

To your point about “all students can learn,” I agree this has been distorted. That was a slogan in the first school district where I taught, and while this IS true it shouldn’t mean that we have to force all students to learn in the same way.

Good thoughts. Thanks for sharing and challenging me.

I totally agree your proposal of reducing the number of standards. I think the major goal of every group developing a curriculum, especially on a statewide level, is SIMPLIFICATION. Don’t give us a long laundry list with every possible topic that could be taught, funnel them down to the true essentials.

We also agree that we need to pull back from the high-stakes testing mindset that is destroying our schools. (That sounds like hyperbole, but I really believe it.) I don’t think we’re going to eliminate it totally, at least in the near future. So how about this? Instead of having these tests every single year for every single grade level, why don’t we limit it to fifth and eighth grade? Individual districts and schools can come up with their own assessment plans (but should be encouraged to widen it beyond simple multiple choice type of tests) but states have to limit themselves to those two grades. That will be enough to find out how schools are doing in the interest of “accountability.”

I think one of the fundamental problems is that we’ve perverted the ideal that “all children can learn.” Yes, all children can learn, but they all have different interests and aptitudes. Yes, all children can learn, but they don’t all learn at the same rate or according to some timetable. How can you have an education policy without acknowledging that truth?

One of the most critical reforms that needs to take place, which I rarely see discussed, is a fundamental overhaul of the property tax-based system we currently have in place to pay for education. This is an inequitable system for funding public education that ensures that wealthy suburban school districts are able to spend significantly more per student than poorer urban areas can. And the situation is only getting worse as cities further erode their tax bases to offer 10 or 20-year tax abatements to businesses and home owners to attract them into the cities. In the case of many companies, as soon as the incentives are gone, so are they, leaving cities on the hook for millions of dollars and their students floundering for even a basic education.

I also think that schools and teachers will continue to resist change as long as schools are kept separate from the rest of the world. It’s possible (and often happens) to spend an entire teaching career having no real contact with what’s happening in businesses and organizations outside of academia, making it more difficult for teachers to connect what happens in their classrooms to the real world. We need to have more conversations going on as a large community–schools, businesses, government, nonprofits, etc.–about what we need to do. We need to have teachers coming out of their classrooms and their schools to connect to the larger community. Change can’t happen when schools operate in isolated, disconnected niches. We need to build bridges between school and the rest of the world, for the benefit of everyone.