When it comes to academic testing and standards, the issue primarily concerns America’s ability to complete and interact with the economic and academic minds of others across the globe. Acts like the No Child Left Behind Act and other legislation seek to use standardized testing to create a baseline for knowledge and capability that everyone must be able to achieve. However, there are some questions related to that: first of all, are we certain that the standards we ask for are the best objective way to evaluate everyone? Also, does everyone excel at being evaluated the same way?
Despite the noble intentions of testing and standards, these do not necessarily work to create better students. Instead, it stifles creativity, both on the part of the student and the teacher, to learn and educate according to their strengths. By teaching to the test, everyone is at a disadvantage as education becomes a homogenous institution meant to make everyone the exact same kind of learner.
The goal, instead, should be to encourage diversity and creativity through acceptance of everyone, regardless of other criteria, into the education system. One important aspect of Brown v. Board of Education was that it allowed schools to desegregate, diversifying the school environment and introducing different populations to each other in an academic setting. By doing this, we were able to have more diverse and innovative approaches to education due to the different populations being served. While the line between race is a somewhat more visible and easily distinguishable one than the line between learning styles, we need to adjust the education system to reflect those lines as well through discouraging standardized testing as an absolute.
References
Spring, J. (2010). The American School, a Global Context. McGraw-Hill.
Brown v. Board of Education.
