Go, Garfield! Lead. Let the rest of us follow...

I posted on my Facebook yesterday a documentary being made about teachers at Garfield High School who unanimously voted to protest the influx of mandated tests placed upon students. With an admiration of their profession and the day to day reality check that such testing is killing learning in schools they chose to destroy another generation of youth.

I'm not sure educators across the nation can be as strong as these teachers although I'm sure the vast majority of them are behind the rebellion. Anyone who works in a school, sans administrators, see the ridiculousness of test after test after test. I know I've written about this numerous times. We do not have the economic pull to fight against the assessment machine, but we do have voice and we do belong to a democracy with a right to articulate the trouble with the current educational system.

I'm hoping politicians are listening to the teaching communities across the U.S. - most have had enough.

It is scary to me to think that we prepare educators to instill lifelong learning in young people but they are entering schools where knowledge, individualized instruction, diversity, and best practices are virtually ignored all in the name of measuring, measuring, measuring. Of course, it is testing season as most educators have little wiggle room to maneuver around the exams. Most are in favor of yearly measurements. What they fight against is the incessant practice of test-prep as only instruction. Yet, with new regulations, their evaluations will depend on them. I'm wondering how we've grown into this location and it's hard not to fall into conspiracy theories. They're that inane, but that is where we are.

Fingers crossed that this, too, will pass...we're almost at two decades, however. 20 years of students lost to the stupidity of schools forced to succumb to poor instruction.