The Educated Reporter: College remediation and third-grade testing: yes, it’s related.

The Educated Reporter: College remediation and third-grade testing: yes, it’s related.

College remediation and third-grade testing: yes, it’s related.

I should start by saying I have no problem with the idea of testing students and holding people accountable. Sad that I have to assert this, but when you critique anything about standards and accountability in practice you are presumed by some to prefer the status quo, think all children can’t learn, hate minority children, be a moron or something else. But theory and practice are two different things, so let me start.

When my book Tested came out in 2007, I showed how one high-poverty school—like many others I had visited over the years—had narrowed its teaching to specifically what would be on the state test, and what that meant for children. It was often not pretty, even though this school was held up in the media as a success story as its scores climbed. Many critics came back with some form of “Of course they should teach what’s on the test” or “It must be better than what came before.”

I wish these people had seen what I saw: how poorly that test measured these children’s