I so much agree with this — testing has become everything — and often promotes a type of a standardized “banking” system — where the power of disseminating knowledge fits into the early twentieth century industrial model of schools where students were socialized in assembly-like rows to be taught the status quo and not to be heard from (or if heard from – only through testing). With the promotion of standardized tests and quantitative methods that evaluate the performances of both teachers and students, there is a diminishing of the space for the creation of democratic bridges between what is being learned in the classroom and the challenges of democratic decision-making in our communities.
