Have you ever given serious thought to the obsession this country has for state-wide and national testing. In previous posts I’ve discussed the dilemma that state departments of education have created in their outright commitment to testing the brains out of students grades 1 through 12. I recall a good friend of mine telling me that all of this testing of kids is akin to the idea that weighing cattle makes them fatter. So perhaps instead of making kids “smarter” and more full of information, it makes them unmotivated, and fearful of schooling. And if you examine statements and comments by state and federal officials about testing and standards as they are linked together, the idea is to “show improvements” from one year to the next, somewhat similar to comparing quarterly financial reports of say, IBM, GM, GE, Apple, Kroeger, etc.

In Georgia, the Department of Education released testing results for the State’s elementary, middle and high schools. Only 51% of high schools made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). More than 300 schools fall into the category of Needs Improvement (NE). And of course the Superintendent loves to talk about the “new and rigorous curriculum.” When you read the fine print, you find that the Governor was good enough (election year) to put a “graduation specialist” in each school—that’s another name for a tutor. And the superintent of Georgia’s Department of Education talks about a curriculum that is rigorous and relevant, and of couse we’ll use more technology—technology is a bad word in Cobb county where Cobb’s superintendent tried to make the curriculum relevant by infusing technology throughout the district. He’s gone and so is the technology he had in mind. They’ve dribbled technology into the schools here, instead of infusing it.

So, we are really going backwards, trying to make the cows fatter by testing, testing, testing. The only problem is that the dropout rate in American high schools is higher now than every before, even with the “No Child Left Behind” shiboleth.