Backpacking and Travel Corner

MANY TEACHERS, HOWEVER, ARE unconvinced. In general terms they have four objections. First, they fear that more testing will limit their ability to teach. Increasingly they will have to teach to the test, and will not be able to adapt the curriculum to their basement waterproofing Toronto students. They do not believe the testers’ assurances that the tests will be good tests, which will challenge and motivate students. In the teachers’ view, any test that is the same for all students at a given level must by definition ignore individual differences. Moreover, they insist, there is far more to education than what is measured on tests. But the new enthusiasm for testing ignores this.Second, say the teachers, test scores do not accurately reflect what teachers do in the classroom, and certainly should not be used to measure teachers’ effectiveness. It is a fact of life, for example, that students from middle-class, professional homes often do better at school than students from less privileged backgrounds. This happens, not because such students are brighter or their teachers better, but because they bring to school many advantages other students do not enjoy. To compare the test scores of, say, a culturally mixed inner-city school, wresting with all the social problems its students face, with those of middle-class suburban schools seems grossly unfair.

Third, teachers fear that the emphasis on testing will hurt students rather than help them. There will always be students who cannot pass the tests and who therefore will be held back grade after grade, until they are shunted into low-track programs or simply give up on school in despair. Schools will become, even more than they are already, places where some students make it but others do not.

The social costs of this kind of segregation, say many teachers, will be seen in long-term unemployability, higher crime rates and antisocial behavior that will far outweigh any hoped-for improvements in the academic quality of schooling.