This post is part of a two-part, non-consecutive series on education.

The majority of my education thus far has taken place in public school. The eight years of my life from Kindergarten to eighth grade marks a big chunk of time I will never get back. Some of those years were good (I don’t think finger painting or whatever people do in Kindergarten is objectionable) and some of those years were bad. I left for a whole bunch of reasons, but one of the biggest was standardized testing.

The No Child Left Behind Act was signed in 2002, but I don’t think the effects were really felt until a few years later. I was in the second grade at the time, so I remember very little of the debate that took place at the time, but I realized very quickly that tests were becoming a bigger part of school. In 4th grade, in just the course of a year, my grade took the New York State English Language Arts Exam, the New York State Math Exam, and the New York State Science Exam. And the school felt that the information that they received from those tests was not valuable (when the scores come, they provide very little information), so they made us take the CTP IVs as well. This trend continued on until I finally decided to leave.

There are a lot of arguments for and against NCLB. Proponents will say that it’s increased math and reading scores, critcs will tell you that trend had been going on before NCLB was even signed. Proponents will show more evidence of improved scores and critics will show you evidence that those improved scores are the result of lowered standards. You can read about the statistics in another place, this is about what I saw happening.

The idea that tests are the way to teach kids is not only insulting, it’s wrong. Standardized tests are misinterpreted over and over again. Experts will say over and over again that you can’t use one test to measure a student. But it’s too tempting. It’s so easy for school districts and even our own government to look at a score and decide based on a simple number. It’s cheap, it’s quick, but it’s immoral, damaging, and destructive.

But even that’s not the part that annoys me the most. The worst part is that standardized testing encourages thinking about averages. It encourages teachers to not care about bringing an A student up to an A+. Bringing a C student up to a B looks better on the test. It encourages teaching to the lowest common denominator. School should be about raising the lowest common denominator in whatever way possible, not meeting it. (Stole that from the West Wing). As a pretty gifted student, I was always found myself being parts of classes that seemed like they were put together so that the class average would be palatable when viewed mathematically. Put a few good students in a class with bad students and some average students and it looks decent on paper. Gifted students were left out and talent went to waste.

And it took a toll on the teacher too. Teachers were being reduced to baby sitters and they were slaves to the “curriculum.” They weren’t free to have class discussions because everything centered around the “test.” In making these new guidelines, the Bush Administration seems to have forgotten that teachers are professionals and can create classes that will prepare students well.

There are ways to make standardized testing better. The only way to do it is to make sure that standardized tests are a very small part of testing. These tests are sources of stress for teachers and students. They don’t help. They don’t measure standards effectively. The standards are low. Teachers are forced to teach to a test. Gifted students are left out. Teachers can’t come up with creative ways to engage a class.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but standardized tests are the worst thing that has happened to education from a student’s perspective. Public school students learn less at a higher stress level. They’re taught to memorize, not to think.

NCLB is up for re-authorization this year. When considering the new options, I hope Congress realizes that the purpose of school is to prepare students for life. They need to create an education plan that works. Maybe instead of spending $341.4 million a day in Iraq, we could spend $341.4 million building the best schools in the world. Congress needs to realize that they are dealing with real students and real teachers.

So for various reasons, including standardized testing and my school’s desire to do things that are cheap and not necessarily good, I left. I am now a happy private school student, free from standardized tests (except once a year).

Let me know what you think.