Standardized Tests Have Gone Too Far

Some valid points and concerns about our troubled Public Education system (**courtesy of our buddy, Cosmo).  My wife and I currently homeschool our two sons, …and posts like this make us grateful that we do.

cosmoscon

Much has changed in the our education system since I attended high school in the mid 80’s and one of the biggest is the number of standardized tests students are required to take.

From NPR:

“High school students in the U.S. take lots of standardized tests. There are state tests, new Common Core-aligned field tests, and an alphabet soup of others like the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) and NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) exams, the SAT, ACT, AP and IB.”

Before I get to my point of this post, don’t misunderstand me. Our educators need to be held accountable and we need to improve how we educate our children (parents are included in this too….) and if you want to improve something then you have to have a metric that you can use to measure your success or failure.

Lord Kelvin put it best:

“If you…

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Why is the Media ignoring the rampant Sexual Abuse in our Public Schools??

Here’s a test: just Google “teacher student abuse“. You’ll get millions of classroom statutory rape articles. If you Google “teacher student sex“, you get more… a LOT more.

Like this one:

(via WTSP News) – “…For the first time, we are hearing from the Polk County school district about a Lakeland teacher who, according to police, admitted to having sex with her 17-year-old student. 10 News has learned critical red flags may have been missed with Jennifer Fichter because the Polk County school superintendent said she falsified her employment application….”

Or like this one:

How long can we effectively Govern ourselves, if we can’t effectively Educate our children?

“Real knowledge, like everything else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more than all, it must be prayed for.”

— Thomas Arnold

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My two sons began their new homeschooling year in earnest today, and my wife and I have big dreams for them… by today’s standards, at least.

You see, we want them to have SOME clue as to how many Supreme Court justices there are, and to be able to list all three branches of government in the U.S.A., or to know why the Declaration Of Independence was written.

I know: crazy, right?

But if we manage to do just that, the two of them will be geniuses, comparatively speaking.

Teaching our kids the value of Good Character

I’ve been telling my two sons the same message for their entire lives: my goal for them is that they grow up to be strong, kind, solid men of good character. And anything I do or don’t do is in furtherance of that goal.

As a result, both of them (ages 12 & 13) are presently strong, kind, good boys… so far. I’m hardly naïve, and well aware that with the gift of free will, they could one day make destructive decisions which upend all my and my wife’s hard work.

But I wouldn’t bet on that happening.