Educate Not Evaluate!

At least here in Florida the education system is more concerned with standardized testing, that grades schools rather than students. Lately, we have as a society have missed the boat when it comes to education. Many Teachers have for the most part, been more tuned to prepping students for taking the standardized tests than teaching them anything, and not without cause. The school systems have been forced to implement standardized testing to generate a yardstick on how schools are performing. These results will have no impact on the student's grades. You want a true yardstick of how well the students are performing as well as the school itself? 1) Make standardized tests that judge, weather the student passes the class. 2) Utilize those scores to determine how well the school was able to perform. 3) The subject matter on the tests must reflect the class the student took. 4) Your required courses only, will determine if the students passes or fails the class, these core classes (English, Math, History, and Physical Education and 1 year of political awareness to be taken during their senior year) are required to advance to the next year. All other classes are elective and not required to advance to the next year but, would count towards overall grade point average. Physical Education would be required of all grades, students participating in Sports type extra curricular activities would satisfy this requirement. However, only participation would be required to pass, not proficiency. Electives would be up to the students and their parents. Students wishing to attend college (after their 2 years national service {see an earlier post "Dropouts, Voters, and Voluntary Conscription"}) would be required to have a minimum of 3 years foreign language added to their last 3 years of core classes. Students wishing to enter a trade would have their core classes the first 4 classes of the day and then attend an Apprenticeship program for the remaining school day. Schools would last a minimum of 220 days each year, the four grading periods would be 55 school days or 11 weeks leaving the students 8 weeks off each year.