John Oliver on Standardized Testing

While standardized testing is only one of many factors holding back education in America, it is one we could do something about -if we had the political savvy, the lobbying funds, and influence that testing company Pearson has. It might have seemed like a good idea at one time, but now it’s a system riddled with incompetence, corruption, inadvertent outcomes, and bias that leaves our children with too little time spent on actual education and too much stress about stuff that doesn’t matter in the long run. John Oliver explains the horror in a much more entertaining fashion.

My own kids attended parochial school for elementary, then switched to public school in junior high. They were astonished at the difference in testing. The required tests were just a thing in parochial school, one day out of the year. In public school, weeks were devoted to preparing and putting the fear of God into the kids over tests which, in the public school, determined how much the teachers would be paid. (via Daily Picks and Flicks)