My daughters have been overwhelmed with the testing frenzy in schools since they were of testing age. Both of them test extremely well and score high, but the pressure to succeed affects everyone in their school and district. The business model has been touted by many in our current educational climate as the new panacea. It will answer the questions we need answered, provide a framework for improving education, and enable us to compare schools to each other with standardized testing. The business model does not fit in education and has been inappropriately applied. The differences are 1) the raw materials, or students are different than in business, 2) businesses do not check for quality on just one day of the year and base all their decisions on that one test, and 3) businesses do not check every single item for quality control, instead taking a sample.
Students are in no way like the raw materials used in business and manufacturing. In business, the raw materials are standardized when the deal is made with the supplier, which is impossible and unethical in education. Children in the United States come from numerous different backgrounds, home situations, material possessions, and values because of our freedom—something we are proud of in the United States and hold dear. There is no way to ensure that each child comes to school with the exact same experiences and preparedness as the next.
The high-stakes tests students take in the United States are taken on one day and are just a snapshot of what students know. There is no way a business would not check throughout the production process to see if the product is coming out as planned. Besides belittling our students by considering them products, that is exactly what we do with standardized tests—take student performance one day of the year as an indicator of the quality and quantity of their education throughout the year. If this was the case no business could survive.
Finally, it is impossible and unnecessary for businesses to quality control every single product—instead, they take a sample of the products produced to check for quality control in a variety of ways instead of just one test. This gives them a snapshot on performance and specifications that is both generalizable and much more economical than testing each item. Again, considering students products is insulting, but that is what the business model does. Testing every single student on one single indicator, a high-stakes standardized test, does not tell us whether students are learning or teachers are teaching.
We need to reconsider the measures we use to determine if our education system is working. Students are free, thinking, independent individuals—like we all are in the United States. We need to consider the aspect of who we are educating when determining what type of model to use in education. That is the beauty of living in a democracy—we are all able to voice our opinions, and if a model does not work, we should change it. The business model does not fit education and we should change it.
