What are you trying to prove?

I had dinner with some friends last night, one of which is student teaching this semester. She was telling me all about her experiences in preparing her 2nd graders for the Arizona standardized testing. As an education student I have learned so much about the inequalities of education especially towards ELL students. But after talking with my friend it really took meaning.

She was describing one of her students who is categorized as an ELL student. She is one of the highest performing students in the class but because she is ELL she needs assistance with reading directions. The rules of the standardized test is that the teachers cannot read the questions or directions to the students. For this one student, this means that she will perform much lower on the test because she will not be able to understand what the question is. In turn her low test scores will reflect poorly on my friend as a teacher as well as the school's overall performance grade. The school's grade will be published in the newspaper which will greatly influence public support. The truly unfortunate part of this is that all of the numbers reported are highly inaccurate since the test does not properly convey the student's knowledge.

This made me so frustrated! I feel sad for the student because she is being told that she is failing when in reality she is the top student in her class. The more I learn about standardized testing the more angry it makes me. What I don't understand is why there needs to be standardized testing at all? I can see the benefits of conducting an assessment exam to see where students are at the end of the school year in order to tie up loose ends but I don't think that it should have as much value as it does. The scary thing is that schooling is becoming more and more about testing rather than classroom experience and learning.