All parents want their children to attend “good” schools. “Good” or “bad” is an answer to a set of questions that we would like to have quantifiable. And that isn’t easy to do. In the first place, all schools do not teach the same things. Secondly, they may not all evaluate the students’ progress in the same manner or use the same scales. Lastly, there are many types of educational achievements and many of them do not have “scores” associated with them.
So, it was “decided” (in a rather arbitrary manner), in the US, to make schools comparable. Require schools to teach the same materials, in the same ways, and evaluated in the same way. And just eliminate (from the scoring at least — possibly completely from the curriculum) all of those “messy” areas that are difficult to assign numerical evaluations to. “Messy” areas like art, music, physical education, creative writing, and such. In addition, there are many “messy” areas that CAN be evaluated to a score but, in order to do such, much time and effort is needed. Such areas include non-fiction essays, book reports, topical research papers, and such.
The “No Child Left Behind” Act had admirable goals but, in order to achieve much of it, all schools needed to be comparable. Doing such required the above methods. Teachers had to start “teaching to the test”. Things that would be on the standardized national tests were important to know — everything else was not.
“No Child Left Behind” still might have worked — but not in conjunction with reduced resources and exploding class sizes. (I think around 12 to 15 students per teacher would be optimum — but those numbers are certainly up for debate.) The quantifiable “teaching to the test” stuff could be a part of the day’s curriculum. But most of the time should be devoted to material that fosters the creative, analytical, and investigative sides of their education.
The “whats” and “whens” have become even less important in these days of information access. It is those “hows” and “whys” (and whether it is true or not) that humans most need to be able to do.
Back to reality, however. Class sizes are NOT reasonable. Teachers are not well rewarded or recognized. When classes overflow, “teaching to the test” is what survives. The teacher is considered “good” if their students get good test scores. The school is considered “good” based on their test scores. These numbers affect school funding and teacher retention. Great teachers can lose their jobs in a manner that is parallel to the situation of dedicated school cafeteria cooks being replaced by less healthy pre-processed foods.
Great teachers teach for the benefit of the students and not for the benefit of a numerical score.
Being able to check the correct box on tests becomes more important than being able to write — or to read beyond recognizing the questions and answers. The numbers become more important than being able to create the next important “widget” for a future business. The numbers become more important than being able to research, and verify, what is correct and what is a falsehood. The numbers win. Education loses. Society loses.
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