Excerpt from The Washington Post
By Jeff Bryant
By now it’s become clear to anyone willing to pay attention that our nation’s obsession over education standards and testing has gotten out of hand.
Ratcheting education standards ever higher at the same time we cut supports that schools and students need to reach those standards never made any sense to begin with. And the value placed on testing isn’t yielding the return promised in terms of significantly better results for children and improved evaluations of teachers and schools.
Nevertheless, new tests with even higher stakes are being rolled out across the country. The tests are purported to align to new curriculum standards called the Common Core that are strongly backed by the Obama administration and many education advocates from across the political spectrum.
Written by Jeff Bryant, an Associate Fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and the owner of a marketing and communications consultancy. It serves numerous organizations including Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, PBS, and International Planned Parenthood Foundation. He writes extensively about public education policy at ourfuture.org.
