#takethetest

Here is a two part story where a School Board Trustee in Florida took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, commonly known as the FCAT.

Part 1: When an adult took standardized test forced on kids

Part 2: Revealed: The school board member who took standardized test

This story reminds me of an excerpt from Alfie Kohn's Confusing Harder With Better:

How many adults could pass these exams? How many high school teachers possess the requisite stock of information outside their own subjects? How many college professors, for that matter, or business executives, or state legislators could confidently write an essay about Mayan agricultural practices or divergent plate boundaries? We would do well to adopt (Deborah) Meier's Mandate: No student should be expected to meet an academic requirement that a cross section of successful adults in the community cannot. 

(In the same spirit, I propose Kohn's Corollary to Meier's Mandate: All persons given to pious rhetoric about the need to "raise standards" and produce "world-class academic performance for the 21st century" not only should be required to take these exams themselves but must agree to have their scores published in the newspaper.)

On Tuesday, I came across this Will Richardson Tweet:

Richardson's tweet inspired my brief Twitter discussion with Alberta's Minister of Education Thomas Lukaszuk:

Join #takethetest and invite your politicians to take your state or province's standardized tests and publicize their results.