Monday, December 05, 2011

Memo to My Teen Self: Ha!

This got passed to me after the youth group had a discussion about education.  Now, the part of this that interests me is this school board member went and took the test that they give tenth graders to measure reading and math skills. Now, I think there's an interesting point here. I think this piece overlooks the things that I was sure I would never need again, and then, maybe did, but certainly there's food for thought.  If these adults all agree that many of these things are not useful to their current lives and jobs, then is this the measure we want to use while evaluating schools and kids and who should think about college. 
Now, I confess, I was (and still seem to be) a pretty good test taker, so I was not led astray by errant test results. But while I understand the value of having some sort of consistent measure of students from different schools, I think most people agree these things have flaws. I'm not sure there is a perfect solution, but maybe there is a better solution.  And kids, maybe you should see if you can get your parents to take the test.