In an address that will appeal to American and English teachers alike, Obama has recently addressed standardised testing calling for US schools to incorporate more creativity into the classroom and reduce the pressure associated with formal tests.
If our kids had more free time at school, what would you want them to do with it?
A) Learn to play a musical instrument?
B) Study a new language?
C) Learn how to code HTML?
D) Take more standardized tests?
Take the quiz, then watch President Obama’s message about smarter ways to measure our kids’ progress in school.Posted by The White House on Saturday, October 24, 2015
Obama expressed his views on releasing students from the time required to prepare and sit for tests and redirect some of this activity toward creative expression and learning.
“When I think back on the great teachers in my life, what I remember isn’t the way they prepared me for a standardised test,” he says. “What I remember is the way they taught me to believe in myself, to be curious about the world, to take charge of my own learning so I could reach my own potential. To inspire me. To open up a window to parts of the world I had never thought of before.
“That’s what good teaching is. That’s what a great education is.”
Testing “takes the joy out of teaching and learning.”
In regard to how testing should be implemented he asserted that “they should be worth taking, they should enhance teaching and learning rather than taking up classroom time unnecessarily, and they should be one of many sources of information on a child’s ability”.
“Learning is about so much more than just filling in the right bubble,” the President said. “So we’re going to work with states, school districts, teachers and parents to make sure that we’re not obsessing about testing.”
What are your thoughts? Do we need to change the way students are assessed?
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