Teaching to the Test

I came across this cartoon by Daryl Cagle which originally appeared on MSNBC.com that depicts a potential job employer interviewing a recent high school graduate. The interviewer asks the high school graduate how high school has prepared him for this potential job he is interviewing for. The high school graduate’s response shows a picture of a standard test answer sheet with the answer circles filled in.

I personally feel that this cartoon is trying to express that most public schools are not successfully preparing their students for the real world. This is because too often teachers have to “teach to the test” in order to get the funding that their school needs. Basically if the teacher’s classroom grades aren’t high enough, the funding from the government significantly declines. So to stop this from happening, the teachers teach the students exactly what is going to be on the test. Often times this causes the students to know what an answer is, but not fully understand the topic from where the answer came from. This is a horrible practice to allow. In the real world you aren’t allowed to just know an answer; you have to be able to understand the topics behind them. This practice causes students to have a deficiency of critical thinking skills which are necessary for future job employment. In my opinion standardized testing needs to be stopped. There are no benefits that students receive from it and the only benefit that the school receives is bragging rights over having the “smartest” students.