I found this chapter to be an echo of the same message I have been hearing since I entered the teaching profession: standardized testing is not working. It is intriguing to me that the standards have been lowered on many tests just to allow students to reach the level of "proficient" more easily. No one benefits from that, and we lose any credibility that testing might have had. The fact that so many people are graduating from college without being able to read proficiently is frightening.
It seems as though the United States is working backwards when compared to other nations. Japan and China once had more stifling standardized testing, but they are now beginning to work toward a more creative approach that allows for problem-solving and critical thinking. Those essential skills are being lost in American education because there is such a push to raise our test scores.
As stated by Yong Zhao, the author of "Are We Fixing the Wrong Thing?", the United States is actually still the leader in science and technology. That is because our citizens have been encouraged to be creative for so long. If we begin to lose that, we will lose ground in the world and become less innovative.
One thing that is fascinating to me is that reading in a deep, meaningful way seems to be associated with creativity. Although reading may not be considered by most to be a creative act, I can see how having a creative mind could make reading more enjoyable. When the reader is truly able to delve into the content of a book and think critically about what is going on in the book, he or she is going to pull much more from the experience. Surface-level reading is not enjoyable or memorable. Schools need to continue encouraging creativity so that students will want to read and be able to see the inherent value in reading.
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