President Obama Says Too Much Standardized Testing Makes Education Boring for Kids

President Barack Obama says students should take less standardized tests & says nothing about parental involvement & accountability.

In a move to further dumb-down American kids, President Obama said Monday that students should take less standardized tests and too much testing makes education boring for kids. Er, whoever said we should interrupt the learning experience with a book? They are crazy, right? Of course I am being sarcastic. As a parent of two boys, education means more to me than just a standardized test, but the tests are important to see how much the students are retaining. I went to a Catholic high school in Jamaica and I learned how to think critically and to write essays in response to questions on tests in preparation for General Certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary level tests. At no time were those exams dumbed-down to be solely multiple choice. Anyone can pass a multiple choice test. It doesn't show you understand the material. To put this in perspective, when I started attending Ohio University, I did not study much for the foundation courses such as Spanish, English and Math. I already did it in high school in Jamaica. I was prepared to meet any challenges in college because of the education I received in grade and high schools.

We can't continue to hold schools only accountable and ignore parents. Some parents just aren't pulling their weight and hold the expectation that the school should fix whatever ails their kids. So, in my view, we don't need to eliminate standardized tests, or else everyone will get promoted to another grade whether they deserve to or not. We can't be competitive with other countries if we continue to dumb-down education in this country. Some careers get no respect, though they are vital such as seismologists, environmentalists, archeologists, marine biologists, etc. Some folks buy into the quick money mentality for their kids such as being a rapper and an athlete. Whatever happened to becoming a seismologist, an architect, an engineer, a park ranger, an archeologist, a marine biologist, a medical doctor or a nuclear scientist? Oh, those fields would involve studying and taking tests.

"Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students," the president told students and parents at a town hall hosted by the Univision Spanish-language television network at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C. Obama, who is pushing a rewrite of the nation's education law that would ease some of its rigid measurement tools, said policymakers should find a test that "everybody agrees makes sense" and administer it in less pressure-packed atmospheres, potentially every few years instead of annually.

At the same time, Obama said, schools should be judged on criteria other than student test performance, including attendance rate. "One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you're not learning about the world, you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math," the president said. "All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that's not going to make education interesting." "And young people do well in stuff that they're interested in," Obama said. "They're not going to do as well if it's boring."

The president endorsed the occasional administering of standardized tests to determine a "baseline" of student ability. He said his daughters Sasha, 9, and Malia, 12, recently took a standardized test that didn't require advance preparation but was just used as a tool to diagnose their strengths and weaknesses, and areas where they could use more emphasis from teachers. The girls attend the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington. Source

We all can't send our kids to prestigious private schools such as Sidwell Friends School as the Obamas have. But we have to work with what we have and that involves parents stepping up to the plate and helping their children succeed in school. Nothing the government gets involved in works. Too much bureaucracy and too much BS.

Parents should enforce stricter rules in their homes where television, video games, texting and Facebook are concerned. As a child, I couldn't watch television during the school week and I did just fine. I cultivated a love of reading that has served me well to this very day. We need to go back to basics and some parents need to stop trying to be their kids' friend and try being a parent for a change. As a child, my mother reiterated the wise saying that "reading is the magic key" and that "a good education is vital" in our home. I expect nothing less of my kids and will do anything I can to help them realize their dreams and excel in school. President Obama is saying that mediocrity is okay with his call for less standardized tests because it makes education boring. Nothing good ever comes easy and that includes getting a good education.