Standardized Stupidity

                Standardized tests are dumb.  They don’t do what they purport to do.  The culture they produce is the exact opposite of learning. 

                What worries me about this conversation is that no one ever says, “Let’s stop giving kids Scantron dreams.”  Teachers bitch about having to teach the test (If a student is going to forget about what he’s been taught five minutes after the test, then it’s not teaching.).  Students hate it (But that doesn’t bother me.  Kids are way too coddled these days.  They should have to take tests.  They should just be better tests.).  Schools administrators hate it (They might lose money and/or their jobs.).  So, why do we still do this?

                In my day, it was the ITBS.  That acronym stood for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, which, surprisingly, involved very little goat fɅking.  Apparently, that’s an advanced Iowa skill.  Then came the tests that accompanied our long national nightmare that was No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era program designed to leave children behind.  Now we have more tests, other tests, Common Core tests.  And, guess what?  They suck, too. 

                I can understand the SAT.  Why they changed the scoring system so that you got 400 points dumber ten years after college is beyond me.  I heard that they’re changing it back so that we can now feel JUSTIFIABLY dumber than a twelfth grader.  I don’t think that even the SAT is actually necessary, but I can see how having an exit exam makes some sense.  Oxford, The Sorbonne, and every graduate program on the planet has an exit exam.  Even adding the Kaplan factor into the equation, having exit exams to test what you’ve learned in the last four years is a test that serves a purpose other than providing beach houses for vice presidents of The Princeton Review.  However, and this is the thing, WE DON’T NEED STANDARDIZED TESTS AT ALL.  They have less to do with knowledge than The Price is Right.  They have as much to do with money and surface-level thinking as the Real Housewives of Who Gives A Shitville. 

                I saw on a school marquee that students are taking the CRCT right now, possibly as you’re reading this.  For a split second I felt bad for the kids.  Then I remembered that I had to go through that crap, too.  So, there’s a “what goes around” angle to it.  We suffered.  They should, too.  They won’t question the lunacy of the standardized test until well after they’ve stopped being forced to take them, just like us.  It’s an even playing field of American educational dumbassedness.  At least we got to play real Dodge ball.