Standardized Testing Protest by Save Our Schools

 In a previous post, I asked for memories of public school prior to testing. Matt Damon speaks of his brush with standardized testing in the video below. A partial transcript is here.

"I don’t know where I would be today if my teachers’ job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test. If their very survival as teachers was based on whether I actually fell in love with the process of learning but rather if I could fill in the right bubble on a test."

Mother and teacher Lily Eskelsen wrote a post about her experience at the Save Our Schools march for the MomsRising blog. I suggest reading it in its entirety but here is an excerpt:

"Tests are limited in the information they give. We have always understood that. That’s why good teachers have an array of assessment tools. When you narrow the measurement of success or failure, you narrow the truth. When you narrow the truth of what success or failure means, it distorts reality and hurts very real children."

And of course my summary is that standardized test results are Less Than the Truth.