If you haven't heard of Suli Breaks, he is a spoken word poet/rapper that has some very informative views on education. His work includes, but is not limited to Why I Hate School But Love Education and The American'T Dream (The Purse Suit Of Happyness)The above video is his latest and I have to say that it hits the nail right on the head about the state of education.
I recently attended a graduation ceremony at a different school and was frustrated when multiple references were made to how well the school had performed on the state accountability assessments in comparison to other schools and how they ranked in terms of schools of equal size. Each time the statement was brought up, I glanced at my wife who knew immediately that a blog post was coming.
I am frustrated because the career that I have devoted my short life to is being reduced to a rank and file system of who performs better on one unit of measurement and this is being conveyed to students as a huge accomplishment. Because they are doing well in comparison to other schools their size, they are somehow better than other schools? I would argue that the accomplishment that the students should be proud of is that they know how to effectively take a standardized test the first time around. In fact, in the words of Jason Stanford, "All this testing is pointless. A student who passes his test one year is overwhelmingly likely to pass the next year..."accountability" assumes that repeatedly testing the same problem will solve the problem as if X-raying a broken leg five times will heal a bone."
Further, if the point of accountability assessments is to guarantee that students have the basic knowledge to be successful in life, why are students only allowed to take the assessment once? Should it not be the goal of schools/educators to identify where students are struggling and help fill in the gaps so that they can be successful? The fact of the matter is that accountability assessments really are used for one thing--being able to rank schools. Don't believe for one second that they have anything to do with educating students and promoting growth. If that was the case, students would be able to try again if they are below proficient.
On a larger scale, accountability assessments DO NOT measure how successful a student will be in their future endeavors and that is what is inherently wrong with them. These assessments only allow for students to regurgitate information based on what they learn in a textbook and only allow them to do it one way. I am reminded of a classic scene in Good Will Hunting that exemplifies this point.
In the end, however, education should be about RIGOR and RELEVANCE, not how students perform on a test. Despite what you hear on television from the news and politicians, accountability assessments are not relevant to our students and thus, create a fallacy.
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