Manedew, you hit on some good points.
Standardized tests have backfired in many ways... schools have no choice but to teach for the test. If they don't, they will be maligned by every political opponent, parent, you name it. If schools do teach to the test, they begin to limit students to the content of the tests. In our state, this means math and reading concerns will supercede by far any other concern. That can be a bad thing if your career interest lays outside those two areas.
It's worse than that though. With "No Child Left Behind" mandates, schools are forced to teach to the middle, or even bottom of the class in order to ensure as many people pass as possible. This is great for the lower end, but a disaster for the upper end. Once again, it becomes a built-in governing device that retards possibilities on the upper end.
If I were king... ah... take the Texas example. No way, NO WAY should english-speaking students be held back (so to speak) by non-english speaking people. English is the official language of the country, it is essential our citizens speak it, period. There should be alternative schools (Read: "Spanish-speaking", PC be damned) that teach in spanish, but with a heavy emphasis on learning english. I don't care it is segregationist; the current system of dumbing down our education to pull up the students years behind for one reason or another isn't ever going to work. It's time to face up to that reality.
We cannot compete with students from other countries because we are scared to death one of our kids might fail in school. Other countries have no such compunction, and will freely allow students to wash out. Until we wake up and realize some kids ARE going to fail despite our best intentions and once again gear our schools to challenge students at ALL levels, we cannot hope to compete with any country anywhere.*
*steps off the well-worn soapbox.
