Testing has always been an intricate part of education.
Socrates' method of debating his students was his way of testing their mettle as well as what they'd learned, just as much as a boy's standing in front of his classmates reciting the alphabet was a test of his having learned the ABC's.
I remember in elementary school, one day early in the semester the whole grade would be marched single file down to the cafeteria, where we'd each be handed a sharpened No. 2 pencil, receive a brief how-to orientation, then spend the morning taking something called an “achievement test.”
As the morning worn on and we were served one subject after another, the aroma of that day's lunch menu would waft through the cafeteria; one year it was sauerkraut, and I remember being thankful we lived close enough to school that I could walk home for lunch.
We would all be cleared out for the lunch hour, then come back in the afternoon, after recess, and soon the room was filled with the smells of hot bodies, hot water and dish soap, and garbage.
And that was it.
Sometime later in the year there would be a sheet of paper included with your report card explaining how you'd done on the test, in what percentile you'd scored. I don't remember if we were ranked nationally or just statewide, but I think it was nationally — that if you'd done well in math you'd be in the 95% of all third-graders who had taken the test, and so forth.
What I do remember is that the scores were subject matter for just your parents and your teacher — they weren't aggregated by class or school to be used to measure the effectiveness of teachers and to determine their pay.
Really the test results didn't seem to matter at all.
Eventually, as the years passed, there was enough of a trend in the test results for parents and teachers to see whether a student was progressing or falling short, but I don't think that played much if any role in whether a student was promoted.
That, too, was really a question for parents, of whether to hold their Johnny back a year to see if a second time through fourth grade would get him caught up.
That is the big change in education in the last decade plus: the transition away from the focus on testing as a measurement of a student's grasp of subject matter to a focus on testing as a means for proving some political point.
Students, themselves, are getting lost.
Sure, I remember some pretty bad teachers from when I was in school — coaches who sulked over having to spend at least a little time outside of the gym, a burnt-out high school history teacher who spent much of class time talking about hunting dogs and fish bait rather than the causes of the Civil War or the Great Depression, a math teacher who may have had multiple personalities.
I can't say they did me much harm.
And I had some great teachers whose influences remain with me to this very day.
But I'd be hard pressed to say they were influential because of any special technique or method they employed, that they were better trained, had more advanced degrees than their colleagues.
They left their marks because they cared about their students.
In my book that's what counts the most in a teacher — and what's most in jeopardy with how education policy is trending these days.
Today, that policy is turning teachers into bureaucrats, and have you ever known a caring bureaucrat? They may exist somewhere, but they're like unicorns in the work-a-day world.
A teacher who cares is worth the whole lot of them that can efficiently fill out a lesson plan — in my book, anyway.