The Problem with Standardized Testing

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By Meagan Gillmore

Many teachers acknowledge that comparative assessment techniques, such as standardized tests, often measure performance more than knowledge. Students may recite information, but have little ability to apply it to their lives. This can frustrate teachers, who may feel these systems can’t be changed.

Some school boards are asking governments to suspend administering standardized tests. But even if they can’t reform education policies overnight, teachers have more ability to change things than they realize, says one New Zealand academic.

“We’ve been taught as a profession to become passive, to go, ‘Well we can’t undo this’,” says Welby Ings, a design professor at Auckland University of Technology and former K–12 classroom teacher in New Zealand. “But actually, it’s our professional responsibility to question things that are not right.”

Ings encourages teachers to become what he calls “positively disobedient.” He doesn’t think teachers should be disruptive without reason. Instead, they need to be creative and challenge rituals to help students learn.

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Meagan Gillmore is a freelance writer in Toronto, ON.

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Meagan Gillmore
Meagan Gillmore
Meagan Gillmore is a freelance writer in Toronto, ON.

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