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What's up with the pressure to perform so well on standardized tests though? Are they pushed because the school wants to look good to attract rich families? Or

What's up with the pressure to perform so well on standardized tests though? Are they pushed because the school wants to look good to attract rich families? Or do parents push it so their kid can get to college? In Hungary we only have standardized tests for school admissions, both high school an university. (so you write one test and can apply to many places with the score). Otherwise every two years there's the PISA international test, but that's only for statistics, it isn't graded. All our other tests are just prepared by the teacher. Of course this means different schools have different standards, mostly depending on the percentage of Roma students. Where they are the majority there is not much learning happening and then non Roma families rather make their kids take a 1-2 hour bus ride to the next town.

jrochkind1 7y ago
I think whole books could be written on "what's with the standardized tests". (and probably have been) As a subset of "What's with wanting to measure _everything_ quantitatively and make evaluations based only on quantitative measures, in our society in general?" For various reasons people wanted an "objective" and numeric way to measure student learning and compare it nationally, so they had to create more things to measure... But it's not generally the parents that are pushing them. Except maybe to the extent that parents want to know "How do I know if a school is good or terrible?" and someone can give them a "score" built in part on standardized tests... I think (and this may not be a popular theory), it is in large part a disfunctional reaction to the extreme social inequality in the U.S.. Going back to the days of legal segregation, some people had _terrible_ schools others had good schools. Even once we have legal equality, somehow some schools are still pretty terrible. If only we had an 'objective' way to determine which schools are effectively teaching, and reward those doing well and punish those doing poorly... In fact, though, it's still the poor and not white who bear the brunt of all this terribleness. I know someone who is a teacher who was at a meeting where the principal was explaining why it was "only fair" to the poor students to have every minute of the day regimented and disciplined, because they too deserved the best education... while knowing the principal sent her OWN kids to a "sudbury school"!

jrochkind1 7y ago

I think whole books could be written on "what's with the standardized tests". (and probably have been) As a subset of "What's with wanting to measure _everything_ quantitatively and make evaluations based only on quantitative measures, in our society in general?" For various reasons people wanted an "objective" and numeric way to measure student learning and compare it nationally, so they had to create more things to measure... But it's not generally the parents that are pushing them. Except maybe to the extent that parents want to know "How do I know if a school is good or terrible?" and someone can give them a "score" built in part on standardized tests... I think (and this may not be a popular theory), it is in large part a disfunctional reaction to the extreme social inequality in the U.S.. Going back to the days of legal segregation, some people had _terrible_ schools others had good schools. Even once we have legal equality, somehow some schools are still pretty terrible. If only we had an 'objective' way to determine which schools are effectively teaching, and reward those doing well and punish those doing poorly... In fact, though, it's still the poor and not white who bear the brunt of all this terribleness. I know someone who is a teacher who was at a meeting where the principal was explaining why it was "only fair" to the poor students to have every minute of the day regimented and disciplined, because they too deserved the best education... while knowing the principal sent her OWN kids to a "sudbury school"!