Here is my letter to the editor published on 8/14/2011:
"The Times editorial about extending student testing into private schools is flawed and specious. It is a well-known fact that in many endeavors such as learning, the carrot-and-stick mentality simply does not work. In the editorial, you touch on the fallibility of testing in the classroom, yet you promote testing in order to measure how well our money is being spent. It is the punitive nature of our use of testing that represents the basic flaw in the system. Punishment and threats of funding reductions do NOT promote learning.
Finland has one of the best school systems in the world. They accomplish this in several ways: 1) They view teaching as a true professional endeavor, 2) All prospective teachers must be very well educated and show a propensity for teaching, 3) they embrace collaborative learning, NOT competition, 4) schools have only very basic rules for students, making schools an environment more conducive to learning. Although the American culture is different than the culture in Finland, the basic premise of their school system applies anywhere. It is simple; people can’t learn “under the gun”, and most of the time, learning requires that you “work your tail off until you understand it”.
So how do the Finnish people measure the learning level of their students? They ask the teachers! After all, these are the respected professionals who have direct influence on students. They know that a standardized test is not the only measure of success.
Extending the failure of No Child Left Behind to private schools makes no sense."
