4

Standardized Testing Is A Relic Of The Cold War

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As much as it hurts to admit, a significant amount of the United States' technological advancement can be directly attributed to a half-century-long dick-measuring contest called the Cold War. Shit, that's the only reason NASA exists. So it shouldn't be too surprising that a bunch of educational initiatives passed by the US in the 20th century were made with the singular goal in mind of one-upping the communists. One of those initiatives resulted in America's obsession with standardized testing.

Via History-for-kids.com
Which may also explain how a few questionable ideas made it into the curriculum.

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published a report titled "A Nation at Risk," which outlined the growing threat of slipping education results. It was woven with evocative, nationalistic rhetoric such as "educational disarmament" and claimed that "if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." The report never specifically names the Soviets as the looming foreign educational threat, but considering the context of the time, we're reasonably sure that they weren't talking about France.

This report is widely regarded as the catalyst for the modern test-focused education movement. The nation's largest organization of teachers refers to it as an "obsession with standardized testing" which adds between $700 to $1,000 of cost per student each year. Altogether, students in the US will take an average of 113 fucking standardized tests throughout their primary and secondary school education, all for the sake of desperately trying to outsmart a rival superpower that no longer exists.

Sue Ream
"So does this mean we can finally stop giving the Iowa Test now?"
"If you can think of a way to justify 10,000 unused Scantrons to the school board, then we'll talk."

3

It's Set Up To Almost Guarantee That Poor People Get Screwed

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Despite what you may have heard, the United States actually spends a massive amount of money on public education. In fact, it's the only national expenditure that really rivals the defense budget. Despite this sizable investment, many schools and districts are dramatically underfunded, and in some cases literally falling apart. How can these two facts be simultaneously true, unless our nation's teachers are using the whole system as a complex money laundering operation for the mafia?

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"So howsabout we discuss your funding this year, principal? That is, unless you'd like to be 'held back.'"

The answer is that while schools receive some funding through the federal and state government, nearly half of a school's funding will come from local taxes, usually on real estate. Neighborhoods full of rich people can raise more money than those in the inner city or trailer parks, so kids growing up in an upscale Bay Area suburb will receive a much higher standard of education than kids growing up in Buttfart, Mississippi ... thus ensuring that the rich neighborhoods will stay rich and the poor ones will stay poor.

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"The hole in the floor isn't for show. Every rider must help drive this, Flintstones-style."

2

One Company Holds A Monopoly On (Expensive, Shitty) Calculators

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If you went through high school after the '90s, it's probable that your math exam conditions allowed you to use a calculator, because you were already living in the future and we were no longer a bunch of finger-counting luddites. But it's also probable that there was only one specific calculator that you were allowed to use, to the exclusion of all others: the Texas Instruments graphing calculator, which is specifically recommended by the College Board.

See, even though we're living in an era in which every school student is carrying an iPhone (or at the very least, an Android) in their back pocket, a little-known Calculator Cartel still dictates which brand of calculator they're allowed to consult in an exam. Of course, that's unfortunate for students on the lower side of the economic scale, because an approved TI calculator runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. That seems excessive, considering (A) the design has barely evolved in 20 years, and (B) it's a goddamn calculator. Your cellphone uses more processing power simply to show you the lock screen.

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Nothing says "bargain" like 100 bucks for technical specs hopelessly outclassed by a 20-year-old Game Boy.

1

Everyone Ignores Students' Opinions When Making Decisions

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You probably think that when it comes to judging a teacher's performance, the least-reliable method is to ask the students. After all, they're always going to vote for the "cool" teacher who lets them smoke behind the playground, and vote against the asshole who calls them out for not doing their math homework. The standard wisdom is that if you hold teachers accountable to the opinions of their students, the whole mess is going to turn into a kind of twisted, Lord Of The Flies-style popularity contest.

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"Mr. Peters, third-period history. Cons: Too much homework. Pros: Holds the Conch."

But a large body of evidence suggests that the best way to gauge a teacher's performance is to ask their students. If you've been through college, you probably had to do a survey at the end of the semester that rated your lecturer's ability to actually teach you something. So why not do so with high school students? Or earlier? Isn't it at least worth asking them?

It totally is. According to a study conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, student surveys are really insightful, as long as you word them in the right way. That means you have to put the questions very simply (these are kids, after all) and you have to convince them that their teacher will never know what they said. If these conditions are met, students wind up giving better feedback about their classroom experience than adult third-party observers (the traditional way to gauge the effectiveness of a classroom).

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Not that the effectiveness of classroom observers is exactly set in stone, either.

And it makes sense, because those observers most likely already know all about Pythagoras' theorem, long division, and I before E except after C. The real metric is to ask the kids, who are the ones in the process of trying to absorb this shit. They're doing trials on this in some states already. At that point, it's as simple as taking their feedback and making changes. Should be no problem.

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