Choose your variable
It has probably been more than two decades now since I heard these words from a speaker at an accreditation gathering: About the only thing a US high school diploma tells you is that a person has been institutionalized for 12 years. The speaker argued—rather arrestingly, I would say—that this was the inevitable consequence of a primary-secondary educational system in which time is the constant and achievement is the variable. Efforts over the past two decades to restore primary-secondary education to a more achievement-based enterprise, featuring heavy doses of standardized testing, have met entrenched resistance from those invested in the status quo. Meanwhile, even the strongest proponents of testing are beginning to acknowledge the ill effects of an examination glut.
— Ralph Enlow | 4thoughtleaders Blog