Not knowing whether to laugh or cry

A friend of mine shared the following YouTube video posted by 8th grade teacher R. N. Gutierrez:

I hooted and cackled. We've all probably heard (if not actually said), "When in doubt, choose C."  Use the process of elimination to select between A, B, C, and D.  And how many times have we had our students write about school uniforms and cell phone use? Guilty as charged. 

And as satire is supposed to do, it got me to thinking. Just this week, I received a request for a test-prep book for the new End-of-Course test aligned with the CCSS. How did we get here?  Some like Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman in Pathways to the Common Core, assert that high-stakes testing as part of NCLB has led to flatlined NAEP scores because we have dissected reading into discrete skills, with comprehension taking a hit. Writing instruction became formulaic with a focus on writing for a test rather than writing to think and share.

Then come the Common Core State Standards with its "promise" to prepare all students for college and career.  I like the ELA standards with their clear learning progressions from kindergarten to the College and Career Anchor standards.  But as the Brookings Institute concludes in "The 2012 Brown Center Report on Education":

Despite all the money and effort devoted to developing the Common Core State Standards--not to mention the simmering controversy over their adoption in several states--the study foresees little to no impact on student learning.  That conclusion is based on analyzing  states' past experience with standards and examining several years of scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). p. 5
 

This conclusion is not at all surprising.  Standards and curriculum alone will not impact student learning, rather how the two are enacted does. Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to accountability and testing. I find the sample test items from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium much better than what we've been using the last decade. I am opposed to tests being the be-all end-all of education. If our focus remains on test preparation rather than college and career preparation, (and likely it will as scores are now tied to teacher evaluation), we will stay mired in the process of teaching students how to "choose C" rather than how to think, communicate, collaborate, create.

The teacher creates the conditions for student learning, not policy makers. I am an educator because I am hopeful.  I believe in the power of public education to help students learn to live a good life.  I choose teachers and their students.  I just hope policy makers choose them, too.