Why spending a billion dollars a year on tests is dumb
Americans spend a billion dollars a year (at least) on tests that tell us year in and year out that tell us where the wealthy kids live and where the poor kids live. Those tests don’t tell us what kids learned or if they are even learning. And don’t get me started on the sudden plethora of tests that claim to monitor progress by testing kids multiple times a year. Developmental growth happens despite the school or the teacher, and when “progress” correlates to a child’s development, a school or a teacher are at risk of thinking they are the cause and repeating whatever they did last year, without a clue if it is the right thing. That makes a school worse, not better. Worried about “learning loss” or the more “learning gap” that occurred during Covid? Those are marketing gimmicks for those who want to see public education in a negative light or for publishers to sell you tests that let you see them. Every student learns in fits and starts--Covid made a lot more of those than normal, whi...