Most American millennials can recall the phrase “teaching to the test,” and many of them produce a guttural lament after hearing it.
This hatred stems from the student’s entire education entailing memorization and strategies for state-standardized testing in place of long-term learning.
If a person has had any relationship to controversial education topics in the last 14 years, they’ve already heard the explanations regarding No Child Left Behind (NCLB) at least once.
This bill, like others created by the Bush administration, fed on American citizens’ temporary blind nationalism immediately after the events of 9/11. There has been little observation on the impact such degrading politics made on students.
High school graduates of 2015 were in kindergarten when the bill was passed. Thanks to NCLB, these students are facing new challenges in college.
It is unusual to walk into a classroom and find 35 students asking questions, not about the subject matter of what has been covered in class, but about what the teacher likes, how they prefer essay questions phrased and the do’s and don’ts of comparisons.
This is common on campuses now, as students who have experienced 12 or more years of scared teachers, desperately searching for the “right” way to get students to pass erratic testing, now are forced to learn in an environment designed for diverse education.
After being a lab rat for over three-fourths of their lives, it is challenging for students to use what they learn practically — not just for the sake of passing a test.
Though a key concept of NCLB was accountability, those who supported the bill have yet to taste any of this accountability medicine for their utter failure as politicians. All they did was force teachers to create standardized-testing-Frankensteins who could magically become 11 percent more “proficient” each year — a hopeless task in the first place.
While Bush lies leisurely on a ranch in Texas, reaping the benefits of a Harvard and Yale education pre-NCLB, students across the country play the game they have been taught to do: beat the test.
Creativity and ingenuity are thrown out the window, and students can be seen with dilated pupils in a lecture hall the minute a question is phrased that forces them to exhibit their understanding of the relevance of the subject.
Not only have students lost their ability to take a test on critical thinking in comparison to short-term memorization, they have lost their ability to fail.
With a massive increase in A’s given to students on an array of assignments and tests, mediocre to high-achieving students expect to receive such notes from all teachers and classes.
There are many factors that lead to a rise in the ‘A’ range of students, but one can logically be traced back to teachers who had no other way to get their students to be “proficient.”
If teachers are threatened with a federal reduction of funds and potentially their jobs, they’ll find ways to get students where the government says they need to be.
Although there were many victims of NCLB and it’s careless lark of the U.S. education system, students have been shuffled through the system, a practice that Bush supposedly wanted to eradicate with the bill.
As reforms now seek to repair the damage NCLB has caused in elementary and high school education, college students need similar rehabilitation to avoid becoming educated machine cogs.
Will Meyer can be reached at [email protected]