As the mother of a tween living in the suburbs of Washington, I rarely tell people I meet what I do for a living because mentioning work in education leads to questions about my views on testing. The conventional wisdom is that students should be tested less frequently and that tests don’t offer the full picture of a child’s abilities. Mind you, these mothers are over-achievers whose children are often in gifted and talented classrooms, and somehow the SAT test and the prep work around it doesn’t bother them. They don’t have the same vitriolic response, perhaps because their children do well on these tests.
This may explain why I found the results of this year’s 47th annual PDK/Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes toward education particularly interesting. PDK and Gallup asked whether there’s too much emphasis, not enough emphasis or the right amount of emphasis on standardized testing in public schools. Reflecting my experience, respondents overwhelmingly said there’s too much emphasis – 64 percent – while 7 percent said there’s not enough emphasis and 19 percent said the emphasis is about right. Continue reading on U.S. News and World Report here.
Menu
