Bush Proposes Annual High School Testing

Bush takes on America's education system:



"FALLS CHURCH, Va. -- President Bush on Wednesday began his push to require high school students to take the math and reading tests now required of younger students under the No Child Left Behind law, the most ambitious item on the president's slate of second-term education proposals."



The President has been talking about testing since he first ran for Potus in 1999. I have never accepted the merit of it. As I teacher, I realize the importance of adequate evaluation. It can inform a teacher where your students are intellectually, and it is a gauge as to how effective the teacher is teaching. The President speaks of testing as though it were a panacea. All we have to do to fix our education system is to introduce more accurate and more frequent testing. Iola! All our problems are solved. One of the main problems with our education system (I speak of the public education system. My impartial view is that the private education system, of which I am a part, is not in a state of crisis.) is that it does not understand how to impart knowledge. Telling them that they are not be effective cannot help them be more effective. We could say that we should attack the Aids "epidemic" in Africa by instating more accurate testing. Our education system needs a complete overhaul. It needs an entirely different educational philosophy. Testing can tell us merely that we are still not where we need to be.