Student Testing

Government involvement in education began as soon as Sputnik flew overhead in 1957. The Russians had beat us into space. This could not be. We were the greatest country on Earth. With a heavily bruised ego, the political agenda of the government changed. The Russians had proven themselves to be scientifically superior to the U.S., and our leaders would not stand for it. They decided that our educational system needed some work. This began an everlasting involvement by the government into the educational policy. Policy driven by fear and created in order to re-establish dominance as a world power. However, like just about everything our government sticks its greedy little fingers into, our educational system has slipped into failure and realizes mediocrity at best. In the 50’s, when our country was populated by what many consider to be the greatest generation, our educational system has fallen from first in almost every discipline to the bottom half of industrialized countries.

Our country’s educational decline can be blamed solely on standardized testing and districts teaching students to pass these tests. Our government has created a system which forces schools to adopt assembly line practices in order to meet state and federal expectations in order to receive desperately needed funding. Money is given to schools whose students perform well on assessments that the government deems to be important. The whole child is not educated, only the parts of the child that the district can financially benefit from are considered relevant. This system is destroying generations of future societies. And what is ironic is, it does not work. Our country has fallen down the global educational scale more in the last 10 years than in the previous 100 years. The current practice does not work. Our teachers and schools need to be able to assess each child on an individual basis and work collaboratively with parents, community members, school officials, and other stakeholders to develop student specific goals. Each child should be assessed on an individual basis covering a variety of areas. These assessments should then be used to capitalize on the child’s strengths while improving areas of weakness. Achievement should be measured against the child specific goals; not every child is capable of the same level of achievement at the same time.

The country of Finland is a perfect example of how a successful educational system should operate. Finland has ranked 1^st and 2^nd place in international student assessment since the ranking of countries began. Also, Finland does not use any form of mandated high-stakes testing until students leave secondary school.

In Finland, students are not mere numbers to be crunched. Classes consist of no more than 12 students. Each class has two teachers, each with extensive Master’s degrees. These teachers teach what they want and how they want in order to meet the needs of each individual student. Assessment is used as a tool to improve instruction, not rank and classify students. Also, formative assessment practices are preferred as they allow the teacher to adjust instruction constantly and create an ever evolving learning community within the classroom. Formative assessment also encourages student self-evaluation and promotes academic awareness of individual achievement.

The U.S. has a lot to learn from countries that approach education as Finland does. The first and most important thing that our government could do to benefit education and students, would be to leave it alone. Politicians have no business creating educational policy. Each state should be given a fixed amount of money determined by the number of children in schools within that state. The money should then be divided equally among the schools according to student enrollment. Standardized high-stakes testing needs to stop. Determining how much money a school received based on test scores is absurd and is destroying our once great educational system. Students need to be taught as individuals, not as a number. Lastly, we need to hold our educators to higher standards and create a highly competitive atmosphere by paying teachers what they deserve. 

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