To Test or Not To Test...As Often

It was announced back in January that the TAKS test would be replaced with the new STAAR , the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness.  This new test will begin in the 2011-2012 school year and includes 12 end-of-course exams in the four core subject areas in high school.

President Barack Obama
at Bell Multicultural High School

Yesterday, President Barack Obama said that he believed students should take fewer standardized tests because too much testing makes education boring for students.  Obama is pushing to rewrite the nation's education law in hopes of easing some of the rigid measurement tools and administer a test in a less pressure-packed atmosphere, every few years.

"Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students," the President told students and parents at a town hall hosted by Univision at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C.  He also mentioned that schools should be judged on other criteria besides student test performance.

"One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you're not learning about the world, you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math," the President said.  "All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that's not going to make education interesting."  "And young people do well in stuff that they're intersted in," Obama said.  'They're not going to do as well if it's boring."

The President is endorsing the occasional administering of standardized tests to determine a "baseline" of student ability.  Obama has been pushing his education agenda all month, in which he expresses concern that too many schools will not be able to meet the annual proficiency standards under the No Child Left Behind Law.  The standards goal is now unrealistic, getting 100 percent of student proficient in math, reading, and science by 2014.

Obama is requesting that Congress send him a rewrite of the 2001 law before the new school year.  However, this does not look like the deadline will be met.