Quotes: How Testing Has Made Schools 'Significantly’ Better

We’ve begun, I think, to pay more attention now to interim assessments and formative assessments (which help teachers adjust in the middle of a school year to target student needs). We’re beginning to have just enough information where we can string some things together. - Oregon Deputy State Superintendent Rob Saxton (How a decade of testing made education ‘significantly’ better Washington Post).

Comments

[Neil]

Testing of students is valuable when the tests, usually after completing units of instruction, when the teacher can use that test to help a student. State standardized tests don't do this. These expensive tests are money-making processes for the benefit of the test makers and those who compile them. Smarter Balanced tests, in Oregon for example, are a perfect example of this. Teachers teach to these tests, rather than considering the personal application of curriculum and testing for the benefit of the student.