Go #2 pencils! Rah rah rah! Save our schools!

The Inquirer talks at great length about the "test prep madness" currently sweeping the region. After-school and weekend study sessions, pre-test pep rallies, and enormous pressure on these kids.

I don't remember ever feeling nervous about a standardized exam, outside of the SATs (which even then, I wasn't as stressed out as most - in retrospect, I really didn't even study all that much, and didn't study at all for the ACTs). I do remember taking the exams: the Iowa tests (first through seventh grade, I think), the CATs (third and sixth grade), the GEPAs (eighth grade; I think this was the year we never got our scores because the test was so flawed), the HSPAs (sometime in high school), and at least two others in high school. At least one standardized exam every year from first grade through eleventh grade. Of course, I'm disregarding the optional ones: The PLUS talent-search exam in fifth grade, the SAT in 8th grade (same program as the PLUS), the PSAT, the SAT, the ACT, and my IB exams. I want to talk about the required tests, the ones where a school's funding depends on it.

Why do they need prep sessions? Isn't the whole point of these exams to get a picture of how, on average, the students at a given school are doing? So, shouldn't the students just naturally be learning these things in class, without extra test-prep sessions? By which I mean: the exams should reflect a normal teacher working from a normal curriculum. Sure, if you're doing the idiotic things I remember from high school (eg, holding the ESL students and the Special Ed students to the same standard as the AP and IB students), some kids might need an extra hand. They need extra help anyway. But beyond those special cases, a student should be meeting the standards regardless. If they need to cram specifically for the exam, well, the system is broken. I'm certain that to anyone who's been in any way involved in American public schools recently, this will be a monumental surprise, that our schools suck.

They said it best on West Wing, season one, Six Meetings Before Lunch: Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense. That is my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

Amen, Sam. We shouldn't even need standardized tests. Placement tests, sure. But standardized tests like the GEPAs or HSPAs? No. Our schools should be so magnificently funded, our teacher so immensely well-paid and motivated, and our administrators so determined, that it should just be a given that our students are doing well. Heaping exam stress onto the students and teachers isn't doing any good: it's a band-aid solution. The problem isn't that students aren't doing well on the exam, it's that they're not learning because the schools are broken. Fix the problem, not the symptoms.