I expect to prove that the National Education Standards should no longer be put in place. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid"- Albert Einstein. By allowing these standardized tests, we are pushing basic learning and teaching aside, and limiting our students' as well as the teachers' success. The significance of education is to better our children and to prepare them for the future. That cannot be possible if we are just rushing students through school, thinking they learned something based off a standardized test. In reality students could have just been taught what was need to pass the test and nothing else. Children should be learning how to think, not what to think. Think back to when you were a child and first started school. The basics in elementary are simple when you look back now but, were they simple when you were young? Probably not. Children start first grade between the ages 6 and 7. Students start with learning the minimal basics of writing their name proficiently, knowing their ABC's 123's, and they are also expected to focus while the teacher is speaking. At this young age, the attention span is much shorter than say a middle school child, enhancing the possibility for different types of learning issues. While our children go through elementary they are expected to learn the basics for everything they will need to build on as far as education in upcoming grades. Not only are they learning math, art, music, but they are also learning how to learn. For example, in reading, the early age reading skills teaches children all the fundamental building blocks they will need on how to learn to read. As adults we all understand the importance to learning these fundamentals and to establish them early on. If the child is struggling with how to learn these basics this is the crucial stage to assist in finding out what the problem is.
