Standardized Tests Are a Poor Substitute for Justice

John Kuhn is a Texas superintendent who has been watch the reform biz unfold for a while now. Here, in a quick two minute video, he connects the inequity of school funding to the injustice of offering poor schools not funding, not help, not resources, not support-- but standardized tests. The same politicians who keep some schools poor also demand that those schools hit the same marks that wealthy districts do.

It's the one thing that has never happened with standardized tests. No lawmakers or policy mavens declare, "This school has low scores-- we had better get them some more funding and resources and help right away." Instead, low test scores put a target on a school's back-- this one is ripe for privatizing, closing, replacing, chopping into easily-sold pieces.

Watch this, and pass it on.


2 School Districts, 1 Ugly Truth from S4E Media on Vimeo.

Remember this line: "Educational malpractice doesn't happen in the classroom. The greatest educational malpractice happens in the statehouse, not the schoolhouse."