Standardized Testing Quotes

A neoliberal, late-capitalist education system is increasingly one that teaches people to function, and to perform at ever-higher levels, but not necessarily to think critically. It emphasises standardized testing and stresses "delivery" over enquiry; "resilience" over versatility. ~ Marcus Gilroy-Ware

For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them. ~ Anthony M. Esolen

A sense of responsibility in teaching pushes us constantly to think about and promote the best interests of our students. In contrast, the demand for accountability often induces mere compliance. ~ Nel Noddings

Hence [through No Child Left Behind] the state has been given power...to fire all teachers and principles. So here we have an unusual case in which the students are engaged in the performances, but the high stakes have been displaced onto the teachers who are preparing their charges for the exams. ~ James M. Lang

My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core! ~ Louis C.K.

We are told that standardized testing must be imposed to make sure students meet a set of standardized criteria so they will later be able to fit into a world that is itself increasingly standardized. Never are we asked, of course, whether it's good to standardrize children (sorry, I mean students), knowledge, or the larger world. ~ Derrick Jensen

Over recent years, [there's been] a strong tendency to require assessment of children and teachers so that [teachers] have to teach to tests and the test determines what happens to the child, and what happens to the teacher...that's guaranteed to destroy any meaningful educational process: it means the teacher cannot be creative, imaginative, pay attention to individual students' needs, that a student can't pursue things [...] and the teacher's future depends on it as well as the students'...the people who are sitting in the offices, the bureaucrats designing this - they're not evil people, but they're working within a system of ideology and doctrines, which turns what they're doing into something extremely harmful [...] the assessment itself is completely artificial; it's not ranking teachers in accordance with their ability to help develop children who reach their potential, explore their creative interests and so on [...] you're getting some kind of a 'rank,' but it's a 'rank' that's mostly meaningless, and the very ranking itself is harmful. It's turning us into individuals who devote our lives to achieving a rank, not into doing things that are valuable and important.

It's highly destructive...in, say, elementary education, you're training kids this way [...] I can see it with my own children: when my own kids were in elementary school (at what's called a good school, a good-quality suburban school), by the time they were in third grade, they were dividing up ~ Noam Chomsky

Manuel was sent to Harvard, where he developed a profound contempt for American culture. 'The Americans,' he would say, 'brush their teeth before kissing and remember a page to answer a question. ~ Warren Eyster

The one size fits all approach of standardized testing is convenient but lazy. ~ James Dyson

Third Wave technology will also change how we measure success in the classroom. What good is an annual standardized test, after all, once teachers and parents can get detailed reports with a wide range of metrics, comparing their students on a regular basis to others in their class or school or state? In this way, big data on individual students will do for education what standardized testing never quite could: bring quantitative precision to a qualitative learning process. ~ Steve Case

Working in this industry, I have been exposed to so many products and now realize more than ever how cruel and unnecessary animal testing is. ~ Kesha

Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored ~ Alice Walker

The Testing is no longer filled with excitement for the opportunity to help the Commonwealth rebuild. The Testing is now about staying alive. ~ Joelle Charbonneau

Denise would never get over it. She knew that. Tommy's bones at the bottom of the well. She and Henry had spent some time with those bones. When the police had finished testing and tagging and photohgraphing them the funeral parlor had given them time before the burial. She'd clutched them to her chest. Run her fingertips along the smooth sockets that had held his shining eyes. There but not there.

Some part of her wanted those bones. Wanted to put the femurs under her pillow at night when she went to sleep. To carry his skull around in her purse so she'd be with him always.

She understood now how people went crazy and did crazy things. ~ Sharon Guskin

You used to own the night and put it to good use, during that sweet spot after your father could no longer tell you when to go to sleep and before you shared an apartment with someone else. Is togetherness killing your productivity? When's the last time you stayed up until 4:00 a.m. testing the boundaries of your consciousness and Googling serial killers? But then you remember how hard it was, that moment between wakefulness and sleep. How the moment of settling down was almost physically painful, your mind pulling away from your body like a balloon being sucked into the atmosphere. He settles that. He tells you that your day was rich enough and now it is time to wind down. He helps you sleep. People need sleep. ~ Lena Dunham

In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast ... 'To physics and metaphysics.' Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy - truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. Wood took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else. The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory. ~ Carl Sagan

Definitely that kind of owner, he thought. Self-made man proud of his handiwork. Confuses bluffness and honesty with merely being rude. I wouldn't mind betting a dollar that he thinks he can tell a man's character by testing the firmness of his handshake and looking deeply into his eyes. ~ Terry Pratchett

Instead of testing a new idea or tool, "paralysis by analysis" takes hold. We overanalyze new options, mull over all of the things we don't know, think about how students will react, and then we don't act! ~ Matt Miller

When school districts are measured by how much confidence, worth and hope their graduates have acquired while in school, when the role of education becomes more about nurturing students and a love for learning than standardized test scores, when the term "honor" student stands more for a child's character than than their grades, then schools will again take their role as a place for effective change in America. Until then education will continue to be run by paper chasing, pride driven central office administrators and educational bureaucrats trying to prove their worth to politicians who don't even know our kids. Let our teachers care, let our children thrive. Let our teachers teach. ~ Tom Krause

If Planned Parenthood wants to be involved in providing counseling services and HIV testing, they ought not be in the business of providing abortions. ~ Mike Pence

The version of technology we live with most closely resembles the one that Scots such as James Watt organized and perfected. It rests on certain basic principles that the Scottish Enlightenment enshrined: common sense, experience as our best source of knowledge, and arriving at scientific laws by testing general hypotheses through individual experiment and trial and error. ~ Arthur Herman

Testing stools for C. diff in patients after they have finished their Flagyl or Vanco for 10 days and after their bowel movements have returned to normal (that is, formed and not watery) is a waste of time and money, and is not helpful to the doctor or patient. ~ J. Thomas LaMont

Wouldn't it be good if we could let teachers do what they do best - teach. Not judge each child on a series of standardized exams. Let schools embrace, not exclude, those like me with a different way of thinking.
Stop praising literacy with one hand and closing libraries with the other. Let librarians be free to do what they do best: encourage a lifelong love of reading in every child, even the ones without a hope of ever getting an A star. ~ Sally Gardner

He was watching her, testing the edges of her emotions and believing she was unaware of what he was doing. So she gave him the emotion he craved most from her, need. She couldn't say it , couldn't make the first move. She counted on him to do that. It absolved her of responsibility for the mistake she intended to make. ~ Melissa Marr

I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then I realized that no kite is gonna fly that high. ~ Deke Slayton

I think what Secretary Ash Carter is seeing, and I'm glad he is, is that we got to get NATO back working for the common defense. We've got to do more to support our partners in NATO, and we have to send a very clear message to Putin that this kind of belligerence, that this kind of testing of boundaries will have to be responded to. The best way to do that is to put more armor in, put more money from the Europeans in so they're actually contributing more to their own defense. ~ Hillary Clinton

Often, one discovery leads to interest in another. After the Dauphin's heart had undergone DNA testing and was placed in the crypt at St. Denis, I think people wanted some closure to the story about the fate of the royal couple's only child who survived the gruesome Temple Prison. I know I did. ~ Susan Nagel

Christianity is a very historical religion - it makes specific claims that are open to testing. ~ Lee Strobel

My own experience of over 60 years in biomedical research amply demonstrated that without the use of animals and of human beings, it would have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature death not only among humans but also among [other] animals. ~ Albert Sabin

So, why does this happen? How is it that individuals brought into the profession and identified by pre-employment testing as mentally healthy, end up mired in addiction at a rate nearly three times the national average? The answer typically lies in the physical and psychological injuries officers suffer during the course of their everyday duties and the profession's internal resistance to helping its own. ~ Karen Rodwill Solomon

The time of testing, and of playing, was over. This was the final duel for one of them. Now they were fighting for their lives
for the one life that would emerge from this elegant battle ... For the moment the two of them were evenly matched, arm against arm. Michael prayed that it would never stop, that there would always be this moment of utter mastery, beautiful and rare, and no conclusion ever be reached. ~ Ellen Kushner

Throughout the early and mid-1990s, the Clinton administration debated the merits of paying for AIDS testing and counseling of vulnerable populations overseas. ~ Barton Gellman

Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Experimental investigation, to borrow a phrase employed by Kepler respecting the testing of hypotheses, is "a very great thief of time." Sometimes it costs many days to determine a fact that can be stated in a line. ~ John William Draper

I cannot take a subway without marveling at the lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two, testing us for kindness and compatibility. Is that not what civility is? ~ Bill Hayes

Although I had to admit a certain affection for the Mattel booth advertising Urban Survival Barbie, now with her own Machete and blood testing unit. ~ Mira Grant

Honestly, happy. This happened for a reason. By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself. ~ Carrie Prejean

It is essential that we take steps to prevent chemical substances from becoming environmental hazards. Unless we develop better methods to assure adequate testing of chemicals, we will be inviting the environmental crisis of the future. ~ Richard M. Nixon

Commercials are also any opportunity to meet new crew and work with new kind of rigs. You can explore working with different people without having to make the full commitment of having to do an entire feature film with them and see whether you like them. Also it's great for testing out new equipment, like on the last spot we just did, I used a lot of drone technology, really cutting edge drone stuff, more than I've ever done before, and it worked out really really well. ~ Paul W. S. Anderson

Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its) - Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world - a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious - surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity. ~ Walt Whitman

The question is not, Does or doesn't public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling. ~ Neil Postman

Religion, like science, is only noteworthy when it emphasizes a matter of what is true rather than whose belief is greater or lesser or which deity works for whom. Sincere religion and tested science are similar in that their assertions can be argued logically and objectively; otherwise, we get false cults and babble. ~ Criss Jami

Denise: "So your present project is ready to pass to the testing people?" Ralph: "Absolutely." Denise: "Okay, since you're so sure it's adequately tested, I'm going to make you the following generous offer: If fewer than three bugs turn up in your component during testing, I will give you a raise. But if three or more bugs turn up during testing, you won't earn a raise this year." Ralph: "Um . . ." Denise: "Um what?" "Could I just have the component back for a few little tests I want to do? ~ Gerald M. Weinberg

Life is perpetually testing us not only by administering these "thousand natural shocks" but by making us choose among them. Rarely is the answer as easy and obvious as "cake." In the most challenging predicaments, perceived causality for an undesirable outcome, even if there was no clearer or better choice, can be a debilitating burden. We frequently pay a mental and emotional tax for freedom of choice. ~ Sheena Iyengar

But despite the maturity of the basic F4U design, the risks involved in flight-testing design changes remained. On 8 July 1946 test pilot Dick Burroughs was killed while attempting to land at the Tweed New Haven Airport following an engine failure in the XF4U-5. Later that year, project pilot Bill Horan survived a risky bail out of an F4U-5 following an engine failure during a high altitude dive test over Long Island Sound. ~ Ralph Harvey

A lot of players are slow to change, you're playing good,( you think) why do I want to mess with that ? It takes a lot of testing, a lot of practice and observation of the ball, especially under competitive circumstances, to realize this is a better product and I need to start using it. ~ David Duval

The Creator never singles out an individual for an important service to mankind without first testing him, through struggle, in proportion to the nature of the service he is to render. ~ Napoleon Hill

Problems are a part of life in a fallen world, and they are necessary part of it, necessary to our testing and to our growth. ~ Rousas John Rushdoony

The cost of research, development and testing of a new drug is vastly greater than the cost of each dose produced. How should we pay for new medicines? Innovators should be rewarded according to the impact of their medicine, and people should contribute to these rewards according to their ability to pay. ~ Thomas Pogge

Phaedra's body pulled at the light, testing the softer side of midnight. Hyacinth usually slipped out of bed in the middle of the night, careful to fit her rustle inside Phaedra's dreams. ~ Naomi Jackson

If we think that God loves us only if we act in a certain way, we will see our lives as a time of testing. We need to rise to the challenge, to avoid mistakes, to labor to do the right thing. But if God is Love loving, our life is a time of growing and maturing. "All the things in this world" are ways to become closer to God. ~ David L. Fleming