Testing has taken over our schools and our students suffer because of it.

Standardized, high-stakes tests are the single greatest obstacle in the way of curricular improvement. Sold to the public as a necessary club to hold over teachers’ heads, the tests are dumbing down kids at a spectacular rate. The problem isn’t test overuse. The problem is their inability to measure what most needs to be measured.
Standardized tests are to accountability what a finger in the wind is to a weather station. What they measure — information stored in memory — is useful, but for kids facing an unknown future, that’s not nearly enough. They need to know how to create new knowledge. That knowledge will be original, and standardized tests can’t evaluate original, non-standard thought.
Unwilling to trust teacher judgment, we’ve handed their responsibilities to machines incapable of making judgment calls.
Tell business leaders and politicians to put their own houses in order and give education back to educators.


http://www.alternet.org/education/what-real-paradigm-shift-education-would-look?page=0%2C1&akid=10072.294211.IEeH9d&rd=1&src=newsletter796377&t=19