One of my first assignments in the teacher prep program I attended was to write an essay sharing my opinions about standardized testing. As I was (and still am) wont to do, I answered honestly. Standardized testing is garbage. It encourages memorization instead of thinking. It forces every single student to fit into a perpetually too small/too large/misshapen box. I got a C on that essay. My grade was based on my opinion, not on my ability to write a convincing, fact-based argument. The feedback my professor left me was something like, “Well, how can we ensure that teachers are doing their jobs effectively if there aren’t standards to establish a minimum for what they should be doing?”

Gag me. Here are a few ways to ensure that teachers are doing their jobs effectively:

Trust teachers to be professionals. Teachers don’t choose a life in a lower-middle-class socioeconomic stratum because they want to kick up their feet and NOT do their jobs. Teachers don’t choose to teach because we enjoy having to work second and third jobs to pay off the student loan debt that we racked up in the process of becoming educators. Teachers teach because we are led to service. We teach because we feel like it is our responsibility to do our part to create a better world than the one we are currently living in. We teach because a teacher in our lives left such a positive impression on our hearts that we want to be that teacher for our students. Teachers teach because we love learning, and we are always expanding and adapting our knowledge bases to be better than we were the day before.

It seems like more and more often, I see news stories from different sources about the teacher shortage in our country due to the number of educators leaving the profession. Teachers are leaving the classroom in droves because of high stress, low pay, and no work-life balance. Teachers, administrators, and school districts across the country are constantly being told by legislators that they aren’t doing enough, that their standardized test scores are too low, and that their funding will be cut because we aren’t hitting specified “targets”.

I have an idea for how to fix that. Stop moving the targets, and stop reducing students to data points.

When teachers and districts consistently “prove” that they’re doing what the DOE says they need to do by reaching or surpassing a pre-set pass rate on a standardized test, the DOE revises the standards. Teachers then retool our curriculum, crunch data, differentiate our instruction, and students then hit the targets established by the new standards. Then, the DOE moves the target to include a school’s attendance rate as a basis for whether a district receives accreditation or not. Attendance – something that is ultimately the responsibility of parents – is now a piece of the puzzle that will determine whether a school gets accredited by the DOE. That accreditation, in turn, affects a district’s funding. So, why are we as teachers held accountable for and consequently drowning in a cesspool of stress and anxiety because of students’ attendance? To answer that question, think about who benefits from telling schools that they are failing.

If we don’t hit the arbitrary marks that the government sets for us, then the government can use that as justification to decrease or withhold our funding. That means that the school districts in the worst shape – the ones affected the most by poverty, the ones in areas with the most meager tax bases, the ones with the highest unemployment rates due to the lack of any sustainable local job market, the districts that need help the most – get LESS funding.

All this while the Virginia DOE continues to pay tens of millions of dollars annually to Pearson, the company responsible for creating and delivering SOL tests across the state. And what else does Pearson do? They publish textbooks and materials that are marketed to districts with the promise of improving test scores. They receive revenue not just on the products they sell, but also in the form of tax breaks extended to them by localities that allegedly need their help, according to Pearson. Over a six-year period, the companies that are in business to make a profit off of public education by constantly telling school districts that they’re falling behind paid more than $20 million to lobby state and national lawmakers. The standardized testing industry generates around TWO BILLION dollars in revenue each year. To break that down, there are approximately 15,000 school districts in the United States. Divide the $2 billion that districts are currently paying for standardized testing, and that would free up over $100,000 annually in each school district in the country. The math here is oversimplified, but the point is both salient and disheartening.

Twenty years of mandated, linked with school funding standardized testing have not improved the quality of education our children are getting. So what if funding were based solely on enrollment instead of test scores? What if the government took all of the money they spend on standardized testing and pushed it back into the school districts where districts could pay teachers more? What if teachers could spend their time teaching instead of crunching data for documentation purposes, attending meetings, and monitoring attendance? What if teachers had all of the class hours they currently spend on progress monitoring, charting, pre-benchmark test prep, benchmark testing, and post-benchmark test reviewing to teach our students life and social skills, digital citizenship skills, how to discern the validity of information they see online, and how to think for themselves?

What if lawmakers and the DOE saw students as human beings and teachers as trusted professionals instead of seeing both as vehicles for measuring out how much money they will or won’t have to spend to ensure that everyone gets the education that they are legally entitled to?

What if our communities were full of young people who were empowered and taught to think critically?

Keep on moving those targets. Teachers and students will continue to hit them because that’s what we do – we rise to the occasion, no matter how impossible the goal seems to be.