Wendy Kopp Quotes
Standardised tests cannot capture all, but on the other hand, students who are not capable of doing well on standardised tests are not well-equipped to thrive in today's world and so it's important for teachers to ensure that students gain the foundation necessary to meet the baseline educational standards these tests represent.
Rubin, C.M. "The Global Search for Education: In Search of Leaders – Teach for All." HuffPost, 23 May 2012.
The testing movement that was a part of the so called educational reform of the George W. Bush Administration’s educational reform program that also had bipartisan support also had unintended consequences which some however predicted. Curricula changes and music, art, home economics, civics, physical education tended to get deemphasized or dropped as all schools were focused on was the test performance; school economic and ethnic segregation became worse as publicly available test scores by school and district tended to persuade parents who could afford alternatives (including moving) would avoid poor testing schools. By conditioning school funds and teacher salaries on test performance, teachers tended to avoid the poorer testing schools in favor of those with students who would score well. Perhaps worst of all cheating was rampant, where teachers and school administrators would change test scores or get teachers the tests just before they were administered. School systems misclassified poor testing students as having mental or learning deficiencies so they would not bring the average down. Some states and large school systems, would encourage poor testing students to drop out of school so they would not bring down the average.
The Governor had just ordered the withdrawal of the State from the “Common Core” national educational standards and testing program. Louisiana has always had a relatively poor education system and the test scores of Louisiana Students were very poor compared with students from other states. However, this was embarrassing, and instead of trying to improve the education in the State, the Governor wanted the State to have their own tests so they could lower the standards and appear to have better results in percentage of students passing. The State Superintendent of Education, however, claimed the Governor did not have the authority to withdraw from the common core, and a political and legal battle began.
Wendy Sue Kopp is the CEO and Co-Founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent nonprofit organizations working to expand educational opportunity in their own countries and the Founder of Teach For America (TFA), a national teaching corps.
