If you were able to change one school rule...

The other day, while doing another round of searching for more blogging prompt ideas. I came across the following question and I posted it on my personal Facebook page as well as in a FB group that I am a part of and on my Twitter page.

If you were able to change one school rule, what would it be and why would you change it?

After receiving several answers to the above questions I saw that standardized testing was the main topic that kept popping up in the answers. Even though I have heard of standardized testing and the discussion surrounding it, I haven't ever taken the test. So I decided to do some research so that I could add more to the conversation. Instead, I decided to let the following responses that I received to the question to the talking.

Photo by moren hsu on Unsplash

Brooklyn - "I would change the enforcement of test lol. Why? Because it’s a waste of time. Instead, there should be more class discussion to test the knowledge and level of learning the students are doing."

"Mandatory attendance"

"No cellphones in class"

"Standardized tests should be used to show how much students have grown from fall to spring and inform the teachers of areas of strength and weakness in their students. It’s one data point that can be used to help us do our job better. It should NOT be used to give out funding to the highest performing schools."

Margaret - "Testing (why so prescriptive?) Supervision of professors. A merit-based system only. Foreign student programs and considerations for language ability. Fewer politics enabling students to take more control of their education."

"Standardized tests are problematic for many reasons: they're inherently biased, they take away precious time teaching *actual* lessons instead of *how* to take tests, they reward money to schools doing well and don't give as much money to schools that don't score well (which???? WHY would you take away money from kids who aren't doing well and therefore need more help????), they're not effective markers for learning among students, etc. Other countries have mostly taken away standardized tests except for 2 years between grade/middle/high school to make sure they've learned the material to continue.

Homework in grade school kids has also been found to not be effective with respect to retention and learning and takes away play time, which is much more vital for their mental, emotional, and physical growth than sitting inside doing math/science/etc worksheets after sitting all day at school learning about it.

There are plenty of things wrong with the U.S. school system and I could go off on them constantly but this is definitely one of the top problems, as well as not paying teachers their due/classrooms not getting the financial support they need, college/university being taught as so necessary while also being so out-of-reach financially, the lack of education regarding life skills (budgeting, home economics, etc), all of the racial and sexist divisions and problems there are that are rarely satisfactorily addressed (putting the well-fraught topic of dress codes here, like policing natural hair for black girls)."*

*All responses and names are used with permission.