No More Testing: Instead Teach Innovation to Our Students

Why America’s Education System is Failing Us

Let me point out a fact that people know but fear to admit: America’s education system

is broken. Decades of education policy failures, decades of political involvement, and decades

of educational miscommunication and misunderstanding has reduced it what it is today. Our

students are ranked 21st in the world even though we spend more on education than most

nations. Finland, on the other hand, spends 30% less than America and yet they are ranked

number one, or within a place or two of it, in mathematics, reading, and the sciences. Why is

that? Well, one nation is obsessed with testing and one is obsessed with teaching innovation; take

a guess at which one’s which.

teach to a curriculum handed down by politicians, who have little to no knowledge of how to

properly educate, and the abilities of the students are measured through testing. As we go up

through the grades, the emphasis on testing grows stronger until there is literally no other way to

measure student progress. However, this strong adherence to testing has managed to throw out

progress. I have always wondered that if tests were meant as a measurement of ability, why are

there review sessions the day before? Why is it that standardized tests that are meant to measure

progress (HSPA, NJASK, etc.) are now prepared for beforehand if not for the sole goal of

scoring high? It has gone from “educating the future” to “fake it till you make it”. In place of

stimulating curiosity (which is the driving force behind learning for children and teenagers) is

ramming down test-taking strategies. In place of trying to instill lasting knowledge is trying to

have students score high on the next exam, while knowin...

... middle of paper ...

... some believing that

defunding education is a good path to go down for this nation. We have created a system that

believes test scores are more important than learning and we have failed to provide significant

incentives for teachers by placing inadequate emphasis on teaching and innovation. These are

sincere and utter crimes that the government and the system are committing and it is time to

change. Some might ask “can we retain standardization and improve on it?” The answer to that

is “no”. It is a broken system; it treats students as products in a factory. We are organic beings,

where learning is unique among all of us. How can the United States say we are number one in

the world when we are not even top twenty in educating our future?

For more refer to the Smithsonian’s Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? and the TEDTalks

by Sir Ken Robinson.