Deborah Meier was interviewed by the Washington Post on Tuesday, and it’s a predictably great interview. She talks about how we can seek alternatives to standardized tests and still have standards, and of course, she gets in some excellent points on what standardized tests don’t do:

Not only do the tests not measure basics, but they also distract us from teaching the kind of stuff that might engage kids’ minds and hearts, stuff that would force them to engage in the real discipline of intellectual life — weighing evidence, seeing other ways of looking at the same data or situation, comparing and contrasting, seeking patterns, conjecturing, even arguing. The trouble with such skills is they don’t come packaged with right/wrong answers.

And for me, this is the point. Yes, we need to make sure kids can read and write… that kids can do enough math so that they can get through the world, but after that, kids will learn different things. Teachers will also teach different content somewhat, because they will probalby care about different things. That’s o.k. Students who have a teacher in front of them who is passionate and caring about what it is they are teaching… and a teacher who dares kids to think deeply and powerfully about it… they will learn how to think and learn far beyond anything a test can measure.

Oh… and here’s the Meier Amendment that I’m all in favor of:

Such a basic test should first be taken by the folks we honor by electing to office. That’s the Meier Amendment: the people who legislate or mandate a test should be required first to take it themselves to ensure that it’s measuring what they think it is. It’s a form of validity checking. They might even have their scores posted!