Tag Archives: standardized tests

We should not rob our schools of our most creative teachers

We are driving excellent teachers out of the profession with our insistence on measurement and standardized systems of accountability. People who became teachers because they were fascinated by the developing human mind, attracted by the chance to help children reach their potential, engaged by the challenge of fashioning learning experiences that would help children grow […]

We should not squander teacher energy

I have worked in schools where teachers will stand up and leave an important meeting the minute the clock reaches the end-time specified in the contract, and I have worked in schools where teachers voluntarily invest their own time to make their schools better. What determines the attitude of teachers toward their schools? What conditions […]

Standardized testing can impoverish children’s education

The testing culture that drives current educational decision-making in our schools impoverishes children in many ways. One of the external forces interfering with student learning is time stolen from teaching.  A middle school colleague in Maine recently told me she literally lost five weeks of instructional time each year to standardized testing. In a system where […]

Adolescents Need to Move!

Schools risk losing the interest of broad swathes of their students when they ask younger adolescents to stay quietly inside all day. Some students can handle a full day of table-chair activity but many are overwhelmed by restlessness and become alienated when most of what they do from morning until mid-afternoon is sedentary in nature. […]