Standardized Test Results

It’s the week when last spring’s standardized test results come home. (Let’s forget, for a moment, that test results 5 months after the test can do little to help a child’s education.)

Every year, I remind my children the same thing, and I do it by paying little or not attention to the test results.

These results do not tell me what kind of person you are.

They don’t tell me what kind of teachers you had last year (I know them far more completely from personal interactions).

They don’t tell me what you will achieve in life (or even in this school year).

They tell you what kind of test-taker you are.

Whatever the scores, don’t make a big deal of standardized test results. They don’t measure anything worth measuring, and do much to harm the education – intellectual, emotional, social, physical – of our children.